Division 


.8.54-3 


Sectioa 


THE  FOURTH   GOSPEL 

THE 

HEART   OF   CHRIST 


BY 

EDMUND    H.  SEARS 


"  It  is  seldom  borne  in  mind  that  without  constant  reformation,  that  is  without  a 
constant  return  to  its  fountain-head,  every  religion,  even  the  most  perfect,  nay  the  most 
perfect  on  account  of  its  very  perfection  more  even  than  others,  suffers  from  its  contact 
with  the  world,  as  the  purest  air  suffers  from  the  mere  fact  of  its  being  breathed." 

Max  Mullhr 


TENTH    EDITION 


BOSTON 

AMERICAN    UNITARIAN   ASSOCIATION 
1908 


PRELIMINARY. 


**  It  has  always  happened  that  in  the  ranks  of  the  scientific  army 
some  have  been  found  who  refuse  to  credit  the  marvels  which  obser- 
vation is  continually  revealing  on  every  hand.  Despite  all  the  known 
wonders  of  the  universe  the  circumstance  that  the  sole  available  inter- 
pretation of  observed  facts  involves  some  surprising  conclusion,  is 
held  by  such  men  to  be  a  sufficient  reason  for  rejecting  the  observa- 
tions of  the  most  trustworthy.  The  value  of  scientific  observation 
seems  enhanced  in  their  eyes  precisely  as  its  fruits  are  insignificant.*' 
—  R.  A.  Proctor. 


PREFACE. 


•'  npHE  fourth  Gospel  is  the  Heart  of  Christ,"  is  the 
-L  euthusiastic  language  of  Ernesti,  from  whom  we 
borrow  the  words  of  our  title-page.  Expositors  both  an- 
cient and  modern,  who  regard  the  four  Gospels  as  veri- 
table history,  have  generally  manifested  the  same  pref- 
erence. "  Written  by  the  hand  of  an  angel,"  says  Herder ; 
and  Schleiermacher,  who  with  his  school  delighted  in  "  the 
mystic  of  the  four  Evangelists,"  says  that  his  soul  must 
have  been  pervaded  by  eternal  childlike  Christmas  joys. 

But  sentiments  of  admiration  are  not  evidence  to  other 
minds  who  do  not  find  through  John  those  depths  of  living 
water  which  those  who  are  more  contemplative  have  ever 
found.  No  book  has  been  the  subject  of  a  more  search- 
ing or  a  more  adverse  criticism  than  the  fourth  Gospel. 
The  history  of  the  controversy,  with  the  motives  of  it,  is 
exceedingly  interesting  and  instructive,  and  I  had  sketched 
it  in  two  chapters  of  this  work,  but  was  obliged  to  omit 
them  in  order  to  bring  the  volume  within  convenient  size. 
It  is  the  controversy  of  half  a  century  between  some  of 
the  ablest  theologians  and  profoundest  scholars.  The  his- 
torical evidence  was  first  seriously  assailed  by  Bret- 
schneider  in  1820,  who  then  published  his  "  Probabilia," 
and  who  contended  that  the  author  of  the  fourth  Gospel  be- 
longed to  the  first  half  of  the  second  century,  and  wrote  it 


IV  PREFACE. 

with  a  dogmatic  purpose,  namely,  to  propagate  the  doc- 
trine of  the  deity  of  Christ.  He  was  ably  answered,  and 
the  only  change  which  the  whole  discussion  then  produced 
was  a  new  value  placed  upon  the  Gospel  of  John.  Bret- 
schneider  himself  retracted  his  doubts. 

But  the  Critical  Philosophy,  dating  from  Kant,  and 
running  by  a  swift  and  irresistible  logic  into  Pantheism, 
gave  birth  to  a  new  school  of  Biblical  criticism  ;  a  criti- 
cism vastly  more  ingenious  than  the  old  rationalism,  and 
wrought  of  finer  threads  than  it  had  ever  spun.  It  finds 
its  ablest  expounder  in  Ferdinand  Christian  Baur,  an 
Hegelian  of  the  left  wing,  that  is,  the  pantheistic,  who 
breaks  up  the  whole  New  Testament  Canon,  and  runs  it 
anew  in  pantheistic  moulds,  fortunately  with  the  calmness 
and  the  icy  clearness  by  which  his  style  is  distinguished. 
He  furnishes  Strauss,  we  think,  with  all  the  ideas  and 
arguments  which  a  Christian  believer  would  care  to  no- 
tice or  answer.  Whatever  we  say  of  his  criticism,  and 
the  philosophy  that  determines  and  inspires  it,  his  three 
works,  the  History  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trin- 
ity, of  the  Atonement,  of  the  Christian  Gnosis,  place  the 
student  of  Christian  history  under  immense  obligations. 

Where  learned  men  have  disputed,  unlearned  men  are 
jipt  to  think  there  must  be  hopeless  uncertainty.  They  do 
not  remember  that  when  learned  men  dispute  with  theo- 
ries predetermined,  their  disputes  are  only  the  play  of 
hypotheses,  and  that  the  verdict  of  the  common  under- 
standing is  better  than  theirs.  That  the  hermeneutics  of 
the  Tubingen  School  are  a  dance  of  this  sort,  is  shown  by 
the  constant  shifting  of  its  positions  and  its  mutually 
destructive  theories.     There  was  a  pre-determinatioa  to 


PREFACE,  V 

make  Christianity  serve  as  a  mould  of  Pantheism  with  its 
nomenclature  unchanged. 

Meanwhile  as  the  dust  of  the  controversy  clears  off,  the 
calm  wisdom  of  Neander,  who  put  in  a  plea  for  entire 
freedom  of  debate,  and  who  saw  what  the  result  must  be, 
becomes  apparent.  No  one  went  into  it  with  a  spirit  more 
sweet  and  beautiful  than  his.  To  his  name  must  be  added 
a  list  long  and  illustrious,  to  enumerate  which  would  be 
to  suggest  works  of  learning  and  scholarship,  the  most 
profound  and  reverent  of  this  age  or  any  other,  especially 
in  the  departments  of  Christian  history  and  evidence. 
Never  was  it  more  signally  shown  how  great  is  the  service 
of  doubt  and  denial  in  rendering  faith  and  affirmation 
clear,  pronounced,  and  intelligent.  Not  only  the  sand 
was  cleared  away,  disclosing  the  old  foundations  more 
deeply  and  broadly,  but  new  facts  were  brought  to  light, 
and  new  fields  discovered,  running  down  like  sunny  glades 
through  opening  mist  to  the  Personality  which  the  Chris- 
tian ages  date  from.  The  result  is  that  by  the  verdict  of 
the  best  scholarship  of  modern  times  not  predetermined 
to  Pantheism,  no  facts  of  equal  antiquity,  judged  by  the 
reasonable  rules  of  historical  evidence,  stand  out  in  surei 
prominence  than  the  fundamental  facts  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment narratives  ;  no  heights  of  history  thus  remote  lie 
on  the  horizon  in  mellower  sunlight  or  clearer  outline. 
Among  the  names  in  this  great  debate  of  half  a  century, 
whether  disclosing  the  external  grounds  of  Christianity 
or  its  divine  contents,  are,  along  with  that  of  Neander, 
Ullman,  Dorner,  Tholiick,  Schaff,  Julius  Miiller,  Giesler, 
Olshausen,  Jacobi,  Hengstenberg,  Bunsen,  and  Tischen 
dorf. 


Vi  PREFACE. 

It  is  not  in  my  plan  to  write  a  book  of  Christian  evi- 
dences merely,  but  to  evolve  the  contents  of  the  Johannean 
writings,  which  clearly  apprehended  are  their  own  evi- 
dence, and  prove  Christianity  itself  a  gift  direct  from  above 
and  not  a  human  discovery.  But  the  exposition  would  not 
be  at  all  satisfactory,  especially  after  past  discussions  and 
denials,  if  we  left  out  the  historical  ground  of  the  fourth 
Gospel,  or  left  it  to  be  suspected  that  this  ground  had 
been  shaken  or  disturbed.  We  shall  see  that  this  has  not 
been  the  case.  Indeed,  it  is  very  difficult  to  make  a  sharp 
line  of  division  between  external  and  internal  evidence, 
and  show  where  one  shades  off  into  the  other,  as  much  as 
it  is  to  tell  where  the  soul  and  body  are  joined  together. 
Brought  home  to  us  in  their  all-reconciling  power,  the  es- 
sential truths  of  the  fourth  Gospel  imply  and  necessitate 
the  form  and  covering  in  which  they  appear  ;  or  conversely 
beginning  with  their  historic  basis,  the  evidence  grows  and 
brightens  all  the  way  inward  to  the  central  light  which 
shines  out,  encircles,  and  irradiates  the  whole* 


CONTENTS. 


PRELIMINARY. 

fAQI 

I.  The  Supernatural       .       .       .       ,      ^               ,  3 
II,  Miracles .  .  16 

III.  The  Immanence  of  God      ...                      •  3* 

PART  I. 
THE  HISTORICAL  ARGUMENT. 

CHAPTER 

I.  Gnosticism 39 

II.  Saint  John  at  Ephesus 51 

III.  The  Johannean  Writings 64 

IV.  The  Scope,  Purpose,  and  Spirit  of  the  Apocalypse  91 
V.  The  Witnesses  of  the  Second  Century     .        .  112 

VI.  The  Witnesses  of  the  Second  Century         .        ,  131 

VII.  Christianity  as  a  New  Influx  of  Power  .       .  165 

VIII.  The  Pause  in  History 184 

PART   II. 
HISTORIC  MEMORIALS. 

I.  The  Four  Gospels  in  Organic  Unity  ...  197 

IT  Jesus  of  Matthew  is  the  Logos  of  John       .       .  220 

III.  The  Mystery  of  Birth 226 

IV.  Nazareth 239 

V.  The  Forerunner 247 

VI.  The  Homes  of  Jesus 255 

VII.  Jesus  in  the  Desert 266 

VIII.  The  Last  Meeting  by  the  Jordan    ....  285 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

PART  III. 
THE  PRIVATE  MINISTRY  OF  JESUS. 

CHAPTER  PACK 

1.  The  Wedding  at  Cana 295 

II.  The  First  Visit  at  Jerusalem 304 

III.  The  Second  Visit  at  Jerusalem   .       .       .       .  319 

IV.  Removal  to  Capernaum 328 

V.  The  Third  Visit  at  Jerusalem      ....  338 

VI.  The  Fourth  Visit  at  Jerusalem      ....  352 

VII.  The  FiFfH  and  Last  Visit  at  Jerusalem    ,        .  370 

VIII.  The  Night  of  the  Last  Supper        .       .       .       .379 

IX.  Calvary 387 

X.  The  Reappearings  of  Jesus 394 

XI.  The  Person  of  Jesus  Christ 404 

PART  IV. 
THE  JOHANNEAN  THEOLOGY. 

I.  The  Cosmology  of  Plato 415 

11.  Its  Character  and  Influence 429 

III.  The  Johannean  Cosmology 442 

IV.  The  Transparencies  of  Nature        ....  456 
V.  The  Word  made  Flesh 467 

VI.  The  Logos  Doctrine 484 

VII.  The  Johannean  Atonement   .        .        i       •        .  501 

VIII.  Converging  Lines 512 

IX.  The  Thrones  in  Heaven.    Conclusion        .       .  525 

APPENDIX. 

A.  The  Easter  Controversy 537 

B.  The  Birth  of  Christ .  544 

C.  The  Preexistence 546 

D.  Personality  and  Personification     ....  550 


THE   FOURTH   GOSPEL. 


THE   SUPERNATURAL. 

A  LL  the  great  religions  acknowledge  at  least  two 
•^^^  ranges  of  existence.  This  material  plane  of 
being  which  we  apprehend  by  the  organs  of  sense, 
we  must  believe  in,  as  it  nourishes  and  enfolds  us 
from  our  cradles.  No  one  ever  denied  it.  Philoso- 
phers dispute  about  the  essence  of  matter  ;  about 
what  is  behind  these  natural  phenomena,  and  whether 
anything  at  all ;  but  no  one  denies  tha^  the  phenom- 
ena themselves  exist.  Those  who  deny  the  existence 
of  matter  only  deny  that  it  exists  in  itself,  or  in  other 
words  that  it  has  any  substratum  of  its  own.  The 
world  of  sight,  sound,  and  fragrance  that  lies  over 
against  the  senses  and  through  them  becomes  an 
object  of  perception,  is  believed  in  alike  by  peasant 
and  philosopher,  and  this  by  common  consent  we  call 

NATURE  or  THE  NATURAL  WORLD. 

In  this  natural  world  there  is  nothing  stable.  All 
is  mobility  and  change.  Not  only  the  animal  and 
vegetable  life  on  its  surface  constantly  disappear  and 


4  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

reappear,  but  the  rocks  become  disintegrated  and 
enter  into  other  forms  of  existence.  Going  back 
through  longer  reaches  of  history  we  find  that  the 
oceans  and  the  mountains  have  been  subject  to  vast 
changes  by  subsidence  and  upheaval,  and  that  the 
aspect  of  the  earth  is  transformed  from  one  epoch 
to  another.  The  very  same  elements  by  changes  of 
combination  produce  the  most  diversified  forms  ;  and 
the  minerals,  the  waters,  the  forests,  the  flowers  of 
the  field  and  the  winds  that  blow  over  them,  are  those 
same  elements  commingling  by  new  affinities  and 
proportions,  giving  the  endless  ebb  and  flow  which 
we  delight  to  witness  around  us  in  the  sea  of  matter. 
Man  himself  is  involved  in  these  perpetual  revolu- 
tions. He  appears  on  the  surface  of  nature,  is  dom- 
inated by  it  through  the  stages  of  his  threescore  and 
ten,  and  then  melts  into  its  bosom  and  disappears. 
The  order  of  sequence,  according  to  which  all  these 
changes  take  place,  we  call  by  universal  consent  the 
LAWS  OF  NATURE.  To  discover  these  changes  and 
recombinations  by  patient  observation  or  by  subtile 
analysis  is  the  business  of  science  ;  to  group  them  in 
theii  class  and  order  and  so  determine  their  law  of 
sequence  is  the  business  of  natural  philosophy. 

The  Christian  believer  acknowledges  another  and 
higher  range  of  existence.  Nature,  we  said,  discharges 
man  from  her  keeping  and  domination,  and  all  that 
the  senses  knew  of  him  dissolves  and  recombines  in 
her  earths  and  ethers  and  flowers.     So  one  hundred 


THE  SUPERNATURAL.  5 

generations  have  passed  away  since  Christ  appeared 
upon  the  earth.  More  than  three  hundred  genera- 
tions have  come  and  gone  since  the  creation  of  man, 
all  of  whom  nature  nursed  on  her  bosom  and  then 
received  back  their  crumbling  forms  and  sent  them 
anew  into  her  unending  circulations.  The  number  of 
human  beings  then  who  exist  at  this  moment  on  the 
surface  of  the  earth,  compared  with  those  who  have 
existed,  is  only  an  insignificant  fraction  of  that  whole 
which  we  call  humanity  ;  only  as  a  single  page  of  one 
great  volume  ;  only  as  the  last  cluster  of  leaves  that 
flutter  in  the  great  forest  that  has  shed  its  foliage. 

If  man  lives  only  within  the  conditions  of  nature 
and  is  only  returned  into  her  endless  circulations, 
then  the  natural  world  is  the  only  one  that  exists  to 
him,  and  he  may  expect  to  know  of  nothing  beyond 
its  phenomena.  But  Christianity  affirms  that  when 
nature  quits  her  grasp  upon  him,  he  still  lives  on,  that 
only  his  visible  coverings  dissolve  and  recombine 
with  the  natural  elements,  while  the  man  himself 
emerges  beyond  her  sphere,  subject  no  longer  to  her 
conditions  and  laws.  It  follows,  of  course,  on  the 
Christian  theory,  that  the  three  hundred  generations 
of  human  beings  whom  this  natural  world  has  dis- 
charged from  its  domination  are  still  alive  and  active. 
Hence  Christianity  affirms  a  sphere  of  life  above 
nature,  more  vast  and  more  thronged  with  people, 
and  whose  empire  is  ever  enlarging,  since  the  stream 
of  existence  has  discharged  its  immortal  contents  foi 


6  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

more  than  six  thousand  years  into  those  endless 
abodes. 

This  higher  range  of  existence  is  called  by  common 
consent  the  supernatural,  because  it  is  above  the 
dominion  of  natural  law.  This  is  what  men  generally 
mean  when  they  speak  of  a  supersensible  or  supernat- 
ural world.  This  preeminently  is  the  sense  appre- 
hended by  Christian  faith  when  it  transcends  the 
sphere  of  natural  change  and  sees  the  things  that  are 
invisible.  Every  one  has  a  right  to  make  his  own 
definitions,  but  he  is  bound  consistently  to  abide  by 
them  when  made,  and  not  confound  things  eternally 
distinct  in  themselves. 

The  word  nature  doubtless  is  made  to  have  other 
significations,  and  indeed  passes  through  an  extended 
range  of  secondary  meanings.  We  sometimes  speak 
of  the  nature  of  man  as  meaning  the  whole  aggregate 
of  human  qualities  which  make  him  what  he  is.  Then 
again  we  discriminate  and  speak  of  his  physical,  in- 
tellectual, and  spiritual  natures.  One  who  is  disposed 
to  play  with  words  may  call  all  beings  and  things 
from  the  mineral  up  to  the  highest  angel  created 
natures^  and  then  by  this  definition  he  may  deny  that 
there  is  anything  above  nature  except  God  Himself. 
Or  he  may  follow  up  this  game  of  words  yet  farther. 
Cicero  writes  a  treatise,  "  De  Natura  Deorum,"  and 
fve  speak  familiarly  of  the  Divine  nature,  meaning  the 
SJm  of  Divine  qualities  and  attributes  ;  and  one  who 
should  be  so  disposed,  and  could  afford  the  time  for 


THE  SUPERNATURAL,  7 

such  logomachy,  might  place  all  beings  and  things, 
including  God  Himself,  under  the  category  of  nature  ; 
and  then  of  course  it  would  be  very  easy  for  him  to 
prove  that  the  supernatural  has  no  existence. 

Plainly  nothing  is  gained  by  these  tricks  of  lan- 
guage. The  words  7iature  and  supernatural y  or  the 
nature-world  and  the  spirit-world,  whether  put  in 
contrast  or  correlation,  have  a  meaning  fixed  and  well 
apprehended  in  the  popular  judgment,  and  we  gain 
nothing  but  confusion  when  we  try  to  disturb  it. 
Herein  moreover  the  popular  judgment  and  the  most 
philosophical  are  in  perfect  agreement.  With  both 
alike,  the  nature-world  is  this  range  of  existence  con- 
ditioned by  time  and  space,  and  subject  to  the  laws 
of  space  and  temporal  change  ;  whereas  the  range  of 
existence  conceived  as  out  of  time  and  space,  and 
therefore  beyond  the  dominion  of  natural  law,  is  the 
supersensible  or  supernatural  world.  Thus  Kant  uni- 
formly discriminates  these  two  spheres  of  being, 
—  nature,  the  realm  of  sensible  phenomena  condi- 
tioned by  space  ;  and  a  cogitable  world  above  space 
defecated  of  sense  and  free  of  natural  law,  and  there- 
fore supersensible  and  supernatural.^ 

Of  these  two  ranges  of  being  thus  discriminated, 
how  they  are  related  and  how  contrasted,  which  is 
the  substance  and  which  the  shadow,  there  is  an 
immense  divergence  of  opinions  and  beliefs.     By  the 

1  See  chapter  iii.  of  Scrapie's  Metaphysic  of  Ethics ;  or  see  Kant'f 
^ritik  of  Practical  Reason^  passim. 


8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Christian  theory  man  is  the  connecting  link  between 
them.  He  lives  in  both.  He  is  the  child  of  nature,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  heir  of  immortality.  But  that 
is  first  which  is  natural,  and  afterward  that  which  is 
spiritual.  He  is  born  with  only  a  natural  conscious- 
ness, and  the  heavy  wrappages  of  sense  become  the 
first  basis  of  his  existence.  He  is  involved  in  nature, 
and  he  may  even  pass  through  all  her  transformations 
from  the  infant  to  the  man,  with  hardly  a  dream  of 
aught  else  than  the  natural  life.  Then  the  supernat- 
ural will  be  to  him  a  phantasy  and  a  chimera.  He 
may  honestly  deny  its  existence  altogether.  Domi- 
nated by  sensible  appearances  what  more  strange 
than  to  suppose  a  man  can  be  alive  after  he  is  dead  } 
Beyond  sense  the  imagination  "  stretches  out  the 
stones  of  emptiness,"  and  to  think  of  that  infinite 
vacancy  as  our  final  abode,  or  as  capable  of  yielding 
a  revelation  to  us  out  of  its  eternal  silence,  is  to  such 
a  man  the  most  hideous  of  all  absurdities.  Men  have 
lived  and  passed  away  from  this  plane  of  being  with 
no  belief  in  any  other,  simply  because  none  other  than 
the  natural  consciousness  was  awakened  within  them  ; 
or,  in  other  phrase,  because  they  only  lived  and  died 
as  natural  men. 

Just  removed  from  this  state,  and  rising  out  of  it, 
are  the  first  faint  dawnings  of  the  supernatural,  the 
first  guessings  and  gropings  towards  it.  But  as  yet 
it  is  apprehended  only  as  dim  and  spectral.  Thus 
the  ghosts  of  Homer  live  in  the  underworld  depleted 


THE  SUPERNATURAL,  9 

of  all  that  fresh  and  throbbing  life  which  they  lived 
on  the  earth,  and  are  described  as  the  fleeting  shades 
of  what  they  were.     What  a  contrast  between  the 
Greece. that  flourished  on  the  sun-bright  hills   and 
plains  and  breathed  her  transparent  ethers  and  de- 
veloped into  graceful  and  glorious  manhood,  and  the 
Greece  of  her  spirit-world   reduced  to  its  pale  and 
ghostly  existence,  and  pining  for  terrestrial  air  !    Not 
yet  did  the  common  mind  or  even  the  minds  of  the 
poets  themselves  come  to  any  practical  faith  in  the 
Supernatural.     For  with  individuals  and  peoples  not 
yet  evolved  from  the  despotic  grasp  of  nature,  this 
world  is  the  substance  and  the  other  is  the  shadow. 
Removed  somewhat  farther  from  sensuous  unbelief, 
and  indicative  of  a  higher  intellectual  culture  than 
blind  instinctive  gropings,  is  that  faith  which  comes 
from  the  deductions  of  the  reason  but  which  refuses 
to  affirm  aught  else  than  the  simple  fact  of  the  super- 
natural.    This  is  the  position  of  Kant,  who  declines 
to  accept  the  doctrine  as  the  gift  of  revelation,  but 
only  as  his  own  conclusion  from  a  well-constructed 
syllogism.     He  does  not  pretend  to  prove  it  with 
"  apodictic  certainty,"  and  he  protests  that  we  have 
no  right  to  envisage  it  to  the  eye  of  faith,  for  then 
;ve  f  y  off"  among  the  chimeras  of  the  fabulists  and 
poets.     We  must  cogitate  the  supernatural  and  de- 
scribe it  only  by  negatives.     It  is  the  absence  of 
nature  ;  it  is  spaceless  and  timeless  ;  it  is  the  perfect 
defecation  of  all  sensuous  life,  and  beyond  this,  says 
Kant,  the  reason  has  no  right  to  go. 


lO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

A  more  full  and  affirmative  faith  than  this  is  quite 
conceivable.  It  is  conceivable,  that  is,  that  the  su- 
pernatural may  not  only  be  believed  in  as  the  result 
of  a  syllogism  and  a  balance  of  probabilities,  but  may 
be  envisaged  to  the  eye  of  faith  ;  that  man  no  longer 
involved  completely  in  nature  but  evolved  in  part 
from  her  despotic  grasp,  and  having  a  higher  con- 
sciousness clearly  and  divinely  opened,  may  be  so 
brought  front  to  front  with  super-sensible  realities 
that  their  gleaming  ranks  and  far-dissolving  perspec- 
tives shall  lie  on  the  soul  as  brightly  and  surely  as 
Nature  does  on  the  organs  of  sense,  and  that  the 
consummation  of  our  religious  faith  and  Christian 
culture  shall  give  us,  the  supersensible  world  the 
eternal  reality  and  Nature  its  feebler  adumbration,  — 
that  the  sun-bright  substance  itself,  and  this  the  mov- 
ing shadow  projected  on  the  dial-plate. 

But  is  there  any  probability  that  such  a  disclosure 
as  this  will  be  given  to  mortals }     Let  us  see. 

Once  admit  the  simple  truth  of  man's  immortality, 
and  how  vast  and  far-reaching  are  the  conclusions 
that  flow  from  it !  How  dull  and  laggard  are  our 
minds  in  coming  up  to  the  reality !  There  are  to-day 
about  a  thousand  million  human  beings  upon  the 
eaith.  At  the  end  of  a  year,  twenty  millions  will 
have  passed  away  from  it  and  twenty  millions  new- 
born will  have  come  in  their  places.  Hundreds  are 
going  and  hundreds  coming  while  I  write  these  sen- 
tences.    In  less  than  fifty  years,  a  number  equal  tc 


THE  SUPERNATURAL,  II 

the  whole  thousand  millions  will  have  put  on  immor- 
tality, and  an  equal  number  will  have  filled  up  the 
earthly  ranks  thus  broken.  The  successive  genera- 
tions that  have  passed  on  within  eight  thousand 
years,  the  time  during  which  man  has  probably  been 
an  inhabitant  of  the  earth,  would  number  by  a  mod- 
erate computation,  one  hundred  times  a  thousand 
millions  of  people.  This  great  multitude,  moreover, 
are  our  own  kith  and  kin  ;  our  brethren  elder  born, 
whose  hearts  have  throbbed  with  the  same  passions 
and  yearnings  and  aspirations.  And  unless  the 
mighty  prophecies  that  go  up  from  our  collective  hu- 
manity are  a  mockery  and  a  lie,  unless  the  groan- 
ings  of  the  creation  and  its  travailings  in  pain  fail 
eternally  of  deliverance,  then  that  great  company  of 
these  uncounted  millions  who  aspired  to  a  better 
state,  have  had  their  hopes  fulfilled  ;  have  risen  to 
an  existence  which  has  been  brought  into  nearer 
communion  with  the  Divine,  and  been  enriched  and 
ennobled  by  being  freed  from  our  earthly  incum- 
brance. How  immeasurably  then  in  height,  in 
breadth,  in  dignity,  and  power,  does  the  supernat- 
ural transcend  the  natural !  And  when  we  speak  of 
humanity  only  as  pertaining  to  the  race  on  earth, 
how  do  we  narrow  down  the  conception  and  de- 
grade it !  If  those  uncounted  generations  of  men 
and  women  have  not  been  disrobed  of  their  human- 
ity by  death,  but  if  on  the  other  hand  it  throbs  with 
a  diviner  love,  then  the  pulses  of  their  being  stiU 


12  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

beat  in  harmony  with  ours  as  one  family  of  the  living 
God,  and  like  God  Himself,  are  nearer  to  us  on  the 
spiritual  side,  because  there  are  no  walls  of  flesh 
between  us. 

"  But  then  our  concern  is  only  with  the  practical ; 
with  our  duties  here  upon  the  earth,  and  our  fellow- 
beings  who  share  with  us  its  trials  and  sorrows.  We 
must  relieve  the  burdens  which  we  can  touch  now 
and  here,  and  nut  follow  our  imaginations  into  realms 
which  are  uncertain  and  remote." 

Only  with  the  practical !  Do  we  become  practical 
only  by  bending  prone  and  working  mechanically 
with  our  hands,  without  any  faith  to  inspire  our  in- 
dustries and  turn  them  to  works  of  love  or  alle- 
luiahs  of  praise }  Does  the  practical  consist  only  in 
finding  the  swiftest  methods  of  locomotion  in  the 
barter  of  commodities,  in  changing  money,  and  in 
handling  dirt  t  And  when  you  speak  of  our  fellow- 
beings  as  part  of  the  great  orb  of  humanity  in  which 
we  are  all  insphered  and  involved,  must  we  think  of 
it  only  as  it  rounds  outward  and  downward  among 
Africans,  Patagonians,  the  Chinese,  and  the  Esqui- 
maux ;  or  must  we  think  of  it  also  as  it  rounds 
upward  into  light,  and  expands  in  those  continents 
vaster  and  more  densely  peopled  which  lie  in  a 
bioader  and  warmer  sunshine  from  the  eternal 
throne  1 

"  The  burdens  which  we  can  touch  now  and 
hire.  '     What  were  the  burdens  which  lay  on  the 


THE  SUPERNATURAL.  1 3 

minds  of  the  two  thousand  of  our  fellow-beings  who 
have  died  since  I  began  this  chapter  an  hour  ago  ? 
What  are  the  burdens  on  the  minds  of  the  three 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  whose  feet  are  now 
stumbling  on  the  last  verge  of  mortal  existence 
which  they  will  quit  forever  before  eight  days  have 
elapsed  ;  whose  failing  eyes  look  for  the  twinkle 
of  some  star  in  the  darkness  of  the  infinite  Be- 
yond ?  What  are  the  burdens  on  the  minds  of  the 
twenty  millions  who  are  crowding  after  them  and 
will  follow  them  before  the  year  has  closed  ?  What 
are  the  burdens  now  and  everywhere  on  our  toihng, 
hoping,  and  aspiring  humanity,  conscious  of  the 
rapid  changes  of  time,  and  groping  for  a  foothold 
on  the  solid  floors  of  eternity  ?  They  are  not  bur- 
dens which  any  "  practical "  man  can  touch  unless  he 
has  stood  himself  where  the  clouds  have  been  rifted 
above  him  and  disclosed  those  higher  and  broader 
continents  reposing  in  the  peace  of  God. 

"  Our  concern  only  with  duties  here  on  the  earth." 
Yes,  —  but  very  possibly  a  view  from  the  earth's 
illumined  summits  rather  than  its  hollows  and  flats 
will  show  us  what  those  duties  are.  Some  centuries 
ago  the  philosophers  thought  that  this  earth  was  the 
centre  of  the  universe  and  the  most  important  part 
of  it ;  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  being  lamps  for  phi- 
losophers tc  see  by.  Even  Plato  thought  the  earth 
was  the  first  and  oldest  of  the  sidereal  gods,  and  at 
the  centre  of  the  axis  of  the  Cosmos  regulating  the 


14  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

movement  of  the  whole.  They  did  not  imagine  that 
the  earth,  and  the  whole  solar  and  planetary  system 
to  which  it  belongs,  were  but  the  lackeys  of  vaster 
systems  which  wheel  them  at  will  through  the  fields 
of  space,  and  that  the  radiance  of  our  brightest  sum- 
mer's day  would  be  but  a  dimly  lighted  candle  in  the 
near  presence  of  those  monarchs  of  the  skies  whose 
thousand-fold  blaze  would  turn  us  to  ashes  if  it  were 
not  cooled  and  softened  by  distance.  Very  possibly 
it  may  be  found  in  like  manner  when  the  sphere  of 
our  knowledge  rounds  upward  as  well  as  outward  and 
downward,  that  it  will  show  us  relations  and  harmo- 
nies of  which  before  we  had  never  dreamed  ;  and  that 
we  should  find  the  supernatural  realms  of  being  run- 
ning into  the  natural,  and  controlling  the  latter  with 
attractions  and  repulsions  which  we  should  be  much 
wiser  and  better  for  knowing.  Who  shall  decide  be- 
forehand and  deny  the  probabilities  as  to  whether 
the  Divine  Providence  will  openly  disclose  to  us 
those  supernatural  realms  where  our  humanity  is 
glorified,  compared  with  which  all  our  little  day  on 
the  earth  is  but  the  prologue  of  a  mighty  drama ! 

Once  admit  that  man  is  immortal,  and  that  death 
is  only  a  physical  change,  and  we  shall  find  that 
many  oi  the  fallacies  of  naturalism  are  speedily  dis- 
pelled Naturalism,  for  example,  scouts  the  idea  of 
a  "  personal  devil "  as  one  of  the  chimeras  of  super- 
stition. But  personal  devils  have  trod  the  earth  for 
a^es.    What  is  the  essence  of  deviltry  but  the  inver- 


THE  SUPERNATURAL.  1 5 

sion  of  the  powers  of  man,  turning  them  against  God, 
against  society,  and  against  humanity?  What  but 
this  has  gendered  the  wrongs,  the  murders,  the  cruel 
oppressions  which  have  afflicted  the  world  ?  Men 
who  incarnate  deviltry  here  leave  this  world  by  the 
hundred  every  week  simply  by  dropping  their  mortal 
coverings.  If  death  has  not  extinguished  their  being, 
it  follows  by  the  plainest  and  shortest  logic  that  the 
personality  of  the  devil,  whether  individually  or  in 
the  complex,  is  one  of  the  stern  facts  of  the  universe 
both  on  its  mortal  and  immortal  side,  and  that  those 
who  deny  it  slide  into  the  very  superstition  which 
they  charge  upon  orthodoxy,  viz.,  that  there  is  some 
moral  magic  in  death-beds  to  change  sinners  into 
saints.  Possibly  when  the  supernatural  shall  disclose 
itself  as  that  other  hemisphere  of  our  humanity,  where 
it  culminates  continually,  we  shall  find  that  our  ascetic 
and  our  blindfold  theologies  alike  will  have  their  su- 
perstitions sifted  out  of  them  ;  and  that  to  split  the 
universe  by  a  horizontal  line  and  leave  the  natural 
below  to  itself,  is  to  leave  it  to  bewildering  fantasies, 
or,  what  is  quite  as  bad,  leave  it  to  gravitate  heavily 
into  dust  and  mire. 


II. 

MIRACLES. 

A  LIVING  writer  defines  a  miracle  thus  :  "  An 
^^"  event  inexplicable  from  the  effect  and  concur- 
rence of  finite  causes ;  which  appears  as  the  in- 
working  of  the  supreme  infinite  cause,  or  God,  for 
the  purpose  of  proving  to  the  world  God's  nature  and 
will ;  especially  of  introducing  a  Divine  Messenger, 
of  holding  him  to  life,  guiding  him  in  his  work  and 
authenticating  his  credentials  with  men  ;  this  divine 
wonder-working  so  shaping  itself  as  to  operate  through 
the  messenger  as  a  power  conferred  upon  him  once 
for  all  to  bear  witness  concerning  Him  ;  its  efficacy 
connecting  itself  with  an  appeal  to  God  on  the  part 
of  the  wonder-worker,  so  that  God  Himself  on  his 
account  breaks  through  the  chain  of  natural  events 
and  lets  the  supernatural  come  in."  The  writer  cites 
alleged  examples  of  such  Divine  interference  :  the 
miraculous  birth  of  Christ,  his  exceptional  childhood, 
the  scene  at  his  baptism,  and  his  ascension.^ 

A  most  lame  and  lumbering  definition,  implying 
all  through  that  miraculous  power  is  one  superim- 
posed from  without,  standing  apart  by  itself,  as   in 

1  Strauss,  Leben  Jesufur  dar  deutsch  Volk  bearbeitet^  p.  146. 


MIRACLES,  17 

some  sense  hitched  on,  not  rather  the  exaltation  of 
the  faculties  themselves  under  the  action  of  universal 
laws,  natural,  spiritual,  and  divine. 

We  hold  this  definition  utterly  unwarrantable  from 
any  claims  which  Jesus  ever  made  in  his  own  behalf, 
no  way  applying  to  the  events  cited  or  to  any  facts 
of  the  New  Testament,  practically  false  and  philo- 
sophically absurd.  If  God  is  immanent  in  nature  and 
in  man,  and  the  supernatural  is  involved  in  the  nat- 
ural, there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  "interference"  or 
"  breaking  through."  Nature  is  the  perpetual  efflores- 
cence of  the  Divine  Power ;  the  natural  is  the  unbroken 
evolution  of  the  supernatural ;  history  from  the  first 
man  to  the  last  is  the  progressive  unrolling  of  the  plan 
of  the  infinite  Providence  in  which  great  events  and 
small  are  taken  up  and  glorified.  Who  but  an  atheist 
doubts  "the  inworkingofthe  supreme  infinite  cause.''" 
And  who  but  those  who  ascribe  the  authorship  of 
nature  to  a  mechanic  and  not  a  Creator,  believes  that 
this  inworking  is  exceptional  and  not  universal,  inter- 
mittent like  the  winding  of  a  clock  and  not  fi-eshly 
creative  every  hour  ?  Who  among  the  myriads  of 
messengers  which  God  has  sent  into  the  world,  ever 
came  without  being  "  introduced "  and  "  authenti- 
cated "  by  the  Divine  power  operating  through  Him 
and  passing  into  works  that  bore  witness  to  his 
message } 

A  miracle,  as  we  apprehend  it,  is  exactly  what  is 
implied  in  its  etymology,  —  a  surprise.   It  is  an  event 


1 8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

SO  unlike  anything  in  our  previous  humdrum  and 
shallow  experience  that  we  cannot  group  it  under 
any  law  of  sequence,  and  so  it  stands  forth  as  \ 
wonder.  If  a  child  who  had  never  heard  the  thunder, 
were  caught  in  the  field  by  a  tempest  and  involved 
in  a  blaze  of  lightning,  he  would  think  "  the  chain  of 
natural  events  "  broken  through,  and  very  likely  be- 
lieve as  they  did  in  the  childhood  of  the  race  that 
God  had  spoken  from  the  clouds.  The  white  men 
told  the  Indians  that  on  a  certain  day  and  hour  the 
sun  would  hide  his  face,  and  the  earth  at  mid-day 
be  covered  with  darkness.  The  hour  came  and  the 
darkness  came  ;  the  Indians  fell  on  their  faces  in 
terror  and  worshipped  the  white  men  as  endowed 
with  supernatural  knowledge.  A  man  who  had 
been  dead  four  days  opens  his  eyes  and  rises  from 
his  coffin,  and  strikes  dread  into  the  standers-by. 
A  young  woman  dying  at  Naples,  describes  a  wed- 
ding scene  exactly  to  the  life  and  at  the  moment  of 
its  occurrence  in  the  dear  old  home  across  the  Atlan- 
tic, hears  delightful  music  perceived  by  no  one  else, 
looks  up  and  exclaims,  *'  How  beautiful !  "  and  passes 
away  from  earth.  What  is  the  work  of  science  but 
to  group  all  the  miracles  in  the  natural  world  under 
the  laws  of  matter,  and  what  is  the  work  of  philosophy 
but  to  group  all  other  miracles  under  laws  intellectual 
and  spiritual  t 

Law  is  simply  the  order  of  sequence  which  governs 
til  phenomenal  changes,  whether  in   the   realm  of 


MIRACLES,  19 

matter  or  the  realm  of  mind.  When  we  say  that  the 
laws  of  nature  or  of  spirit  are  "  uniform,"  we  mean 
not  that  they  give  a  monotonous  sameness  thro'igh 
all  the  centuries,  but  that  the  same  antecedents  being 
given  the  same  consequents  will  be  given  also.  Like 
causes  under  like  conditions  will  be  followed  by  like 
results.  If  I  planted  corn  last  year  and  reaped  the 
harvest,  I  have  a  right  to  expect  that  the  same  seed 
this  year,  in  the  same  soil  with  the  same  culture  and 
the  same  climatic  conditions,  will  produce  the  same 
harvest  again.  But  if  the  harvest  should  totally  fail 
this  year  while  all  the  antecedents  appeared  the  same 
as  the  year  before,  it  would  be  sheer  stupidity  in  me 
to  imagine  that  the  chain  of  natural  events  had  been 
broken  through  and  not  rather  that  some  of  the 
antecedents  had  eluded  my  intelligence.  The  con- 
sequents I  can  cognize,  for  they  stand  out  palpable 
before  me,  but  what  conceit  must  that  be  which 
claims  to  cognize  all  the  antecedents  which  lie  hid 
in  the  secret  laboratories  of  nature,  which  run  back 
to  the  birth  of  time  and  into  the  unknown  eternities 
themselves ! 

If  by  "  the  uniformity  of  the  laws  of  nature  "  we 
were  to  understand  only  an  unchanging  series  of 
phenomena  repeating  itself  age  after  age,  coming 
round  and  round  in  the  same  cycles,  we  should  have 
a  theory  of  the  creation  utterly  belied  by  the  facts 
of  the  case.  Looking  out  from  our  little  moment  in 
time,  and  our  lit^Je  mole-hill  in  space,  we  might  per- 


20  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

haps  affirm  this  kind  of  uniformity,  for  the  seasons 
revolve,  and  even  and  morn  alternate  now  just  as  our 
fathers  and  grandfathers  had  described  them.  But 
how  was  it  in  that  period  before  the  seasons  began 
their  flowery  circuit ;  before  Day  lit  up  its  solar  splen- 
dors, or  Night  quenched  them  with  cooling  shade  ? 
How  was  it  when  our  earth  hung  in  space  as  a  mass 
of  molten  lava,  or  when  the  seas  covered  its  whole 
surface  boiling  hot  and  void  of  organic  life,  or  when 
the  Laurentian  hills  peered  above  the  surface  and 
lifted  slowly  their  drenched  and  solitary  heads  above 
the  boundless  waste  of  waters,  the  first  born  children 
of  this  habitable  world  ?  ^  Looking  back,  not  through 
our  own  little  day,  but  through  nature's  periods  and 
cycles,  we  see  her  moving  not  in  a  "  uniform  series," 
but  RISING  WITH  SPIRAL  MOTION  from  lower  to  higher, 
never  repeating  herself,  never  completing  one  circle 
except  on  a  loftier  plane  than  the  previous  one,  and 
toward  which  all  previous  ones  were  the  prophecy 
and  aspiration.  The  Positivists  will  have  it  that  tem- 
poral change   succeeding  to  temporal   change,  phe- 

1  What  we  call  "  the  New  World  is  in  fact  the  Old  World,"  says 
Agassiz.  "  The  Western  Continent  was  the  earliest  upheaval ;  and  the 
first  land  that  peered  above  the  waters  was  not  the  highest  mountains, 
which  are  of  later  date.  Along  the  northern  limit  of  the  United 
States,  bordering  upon  Lower  Canada,  there  runs  a  low  line  of  hills 
known  as  the  Laurentian  Hills.  They  are  insignificant  in  height,  buf 
the  earliest  land  that  lifted  itself  above  the  waters.  The  earliest  forms 
of  organic  life  may  now  be  studied  along  what  was  then  the  beach  ol 
An  almost  boundless  sea."  —  Geological  Sketches^  chapters  i.  and  ii. 


MIRACLES.  21 

nomenon  antedating  phenomenon,  exhausts  the  idea 
of  causality,  thus  affronting  our  intelligence  with  the 
doctrine  that  the  effect  can  rise  above  the  cause  into 
a  new  and  loftier  series.  For  if  nature  herself  gives 
us  instead  of  a  monotonous  circuit  in  the  same 
grooves,  a  constant  movement  out  of  them  into 
higher  ones  from  indistinguishable  chaos  through 
the  ascending  scale  of  life  and  order  up  to  man,  the 
majestic  coronal  of  all,  then  when  we  speak  of  the 
"  uniformity  of  nature  "  we  only  talk  foolishness  for 
the  purpose  of  blinking  the  glories  of  the  Godhead, 
immanent  in  phenomena  and  authenticating  all  their 
vanishings  and  reappearings. 

A  miracle  is  a  surprise,  —  but  to  whom  ?  Not  to 
higher  intelligences  who  see  the  interiors  of  nature 
and  know  what  is  about  to  be  from  the  unbroken 
links  of  the  ascending  series ;  not  to  Him  who  fills 
those  interiors  with  reality  and  floods  them  with  his 
life  ;  but  to  us  who  see  but  one  link  of  the  chain  ;  who 
are  ignorant  of  the  long  line  of  antecedents  and  who 
stand  where  the  result  first  breaks  upon  human  sight. 
An  eclipse  was  a  surprise  till  the  laws  of  planetary 
motion  were  discovered  and  revealed  it  in  accord 
with  the  harmonies  of  the  spheres  ;  the  first  advent 
)f  man  on  the  green  earth  was  a  surprise  to  the 
brutes  below  him  ;  the  first  angel-appearances  to  men 
were  a  surprise  to  the  infant  race,  and  every  Divine 
epiphany  on  a  higher  plane  than  a  previous  one, 
^'hich   should   date   a  new   dispensation   or   a  new 


22  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

cycle  of  the  endless  years,  would  be  at  its  com- 
mencement a  surprise  to  the  subjects  of  it,  whether 
angels  or  men.  But  what  dullards  must  we  be  to 
stare  into  the  heavens  and  declare  the  laws  of  the 
universe  broken  through  simply  because  we  could 
not  see  those  infinite  antecedents  and  their  unimagi- 
nable consequents,  which  make  up  the  supreme 
order  of  the  creation  whereby  it  ascends  and  reflects 
the  Adorable  Perfections  with  nearer  and  brighter 
refulgence  ! 

The  changes  of  a  single  day  are  miracles  to  the 
ephemera  that  swarm  into  existence  and  die  between 
sunrise  and  sunset.  Supposing  them  endowed  with 
some  sort  of  puny  intelligence,  what  a  surprise  it 
must  be  to  them  when  they  emerge  from  the  surface 
of  the  water  and  bathe  their  wings  in  light ;  when 
the  wind  sweeps  them  from  the  air ;  when  they  ex- 
pire in  the  sun's  last  rays  and  the  three  hours  that 
span  their  insect  life  are  closing !  The  changes  of 
the  four  seasons  are  miracles  to  the  tribes  that  live 
and  perish  in  their  annual  revolutions.  The  transit 
of  the  earth  from  one  epoch  to  another  is  miraculous, 
seen  from  our  finite  or  merely  natural  side  of  things. 
Every  new  epoch  transcended  all  the  experience  of  a 
former  one,  and  came  upon  it  as  a  surprise.  The 
shell-fish  of  the  silurian  beach,  if  they  could  have 
thought  and  spoken  as  expounders  of  naturalism, 
would  have  treated  as  incredible  the  first  rumors  of 
four-footed  beasts  and  creeping  things,  for  would  not 


MIRACLES.  23 

mollusks  and  bivalves  have  been  to  them  the  finale 
of  this  lower  creation,  not  buffaloes  and  stags  with 
antlers  ?  And  then  the  mammals  of  the  tertiary 
period,  who  inhabited  the  green  earth  and  cropped 
its  herbage  alone  for  unknown  ages,  would  have 
been  equally  surprised  when  man  came  as  the  lord 
of  all.  As  if  quadruped  existence  and  not  biped  were 
not  conformable  to  all  experience,  and  the  highest  to 
be  conceived  or  desired  !  As  if  any  other  were  not 
anomalous  and  monstrous  and  a  "  breaking  through  " 
of  the  laws  of  nature  !  And  the  new  race  of  men, 
looking  from  the  natural  side  only,  ignorant  of  aught 
else  than  their  own  short  epoch  of  a  few  hundred 
years,  might  perhaps  claim  themselves  as  the  last  and 
highest  evolution  of  Divine  energy ;  and  if  by  some 
new  epiphany  a  style  of  life  not  animal,  nor  human 
merely,  but  essentially  Divine,  should  appear  upon 
the  earth  with  attendants  and  environments  tran- 
scending all  past  experience,  and  inaugurating  a  new 
series  of  years  and  centuries,  they  might  very  likely 
think  the  order  of  the  universe  disturbed  and  its 
laws  broken  through,  and  try  to  sink  the  fact  from 
its  appropriate  rank,  and  shut  out  the  solar  splendors 
of  the  Godhead. 

What  can  be  more  childish  than  to  make  the  ex- 
perience of  what  has  been  the  measure  of  all  that 
shall  be?  And  yet  this  is  the  whole  pith  of  Mr. 
Hume's  argument  against  miracles  which  Strauss 
has  served  up  anew  as  unanswerable.     The  alleged 


24  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

facts  of  the  Gospel  narratives  —  the  birth  of  Christ 
from  no  human  paternal  line,  his  exceptional  child- 
hood, the  angels  that  attended  him,  the  healing  dis- 
eases by  his  touch,  his  raising  the  dead,  his  own 
resurrection  and  ascension  —  are  unlike  any  former 
experience,  and  therefore  incredible.  They  are  vio- 
lations of  nature's  laws,  and  cannot  be  proved  by  tes- 
timony. The  answer  plainly  is,  How  do  you  know 
the  laws  of  nature  except  from  phenomena  t  And 
whether  such  phenomena  have  taken  place  is  the  very 
question  in  hand.  If  they  did  take  place,  they  are 
consequents  palpable  to  the  eye,  but  whose  antece- 
dents belong  to  the  infinite  laws  of  order  which  you 
cannot  measure,  since  they  are  out  of  sight.  The 
same  consequents  were  never  given  before  because 
the  same  antecedents  were  never  given.  If  we  are 
told  that  Jesus  raised  the  dead,  and  restored  the  blind, 
and  walked  the  waves,  the  credibility  of  the  alleged 
facts  will  depend  altogether  upon  the  question.  Who 
was  Jesus  .'*  and  that  again  must  be  decided  by  the 
amount  and  quality  of  moral  and  spiritual  power  with 
which  He  moves  upon  the  world,  and  possesses  and 
changes  the  heart  of  humanity.  Behold  the  man,  and 
look  before  and  after,  and  then  say,  Does  he  inaugu- 
rate a  new  epoch  ;  is  here  a  transition  period  in  the 
ascending  Divine  series  t  Is  here  a  new  Divine 
epiphany  through  the  interiors  of  nature  whereby  it 
ever  rises  and  becomes  the  more  transparent  type 
and  robe  of  the  Divine  Wisdom,  I^ove,  and  Power  ? 


MIRACLES.  2^j 

If  SO,  we  may  well  expect  it  will  have  some  attend- 
ants and  environments  which  belong  not  to  any  fore- 
gone history, — just  as  the  sun  new  risen  gives 
shapes  and  colors  to  the  breaking  and  purpling  clouds 
which  they  never  had  under  the  colder  and  feebler 
lustre  of  the  morning  star. 

If  a  miracle  is  that  which  "  lets  the  supernatural 
come  in,"  what  are  all  the  on-goings  of  nature  but 
miracles,  unless  we  take  the  position  of  blank  athe- 
ism ?  They  are  the  continuous  enunciation  of  some 
vast  intelligence,  which  is  a  perpetual  wonder,  be- 
cause it  transcends  our  highest  thought  and  compre- 
hension. The  highest  significance  of  the  miracles  of 
the  New  Testament  consists  mainly  in  the  fact  that 
they  show  more  entirely  the  control  of  mind  over 
matter,  or  the  sovereignty  of  spiritual  volition  in  nat- 
ural things.  The  same  is  verified  in  our  experience 
every  time  a  muscle  moves  at  the  touch  of  a  human 
will,  and  more  divinely  and  grandly  whenever  a  new 
phasis  of  nature  evolves  freshly  the  volition  of  God. 
The  works  of  Jesus  which  ''  let  the  supernatural 
come  in,"  are  after  the  analogy  of  all  human  works 
in  which  mind  is  plastic  over  matter,  or  in  which  the 
higher  subordinates  the  lower.  The  difference  is  that 
in  Jesus  Christ,  as  the  New  Testament  describes 
Him,  there  was  a  degree  and  quality  of  spiritual 
power,  such  as  we  do  not  find  in  ourselves  nor  in 
^^eople  around  us,  and  therefore  the  subordination  of 
external  nature  was  more  signal  and  complete,  and 
breaks  upon  us  as  a  surprise. 


26  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

Law,  seen  from  the  Divine  side  of  things,  is  not 
the  order  of  sequence  which  governs  the  phenomena 
of  days  and  years  only,  but  of  the  ages  and  cycles 
of  endless  existence.  Even  if  it  be  true,  as  some 
theorizing  astronomers  tell  us,  that  the  planetary 
orbits  are  growing  less,  and  that  the  travellers  of  the 
heavenly  spaces  must  one  day  mingle  in  the  solaf 
fires  out  of  which  they  came,  who  would  doubt  that 
the  grand  winding  up  must  be  as  much  under  the 
laws  of  the  supreme  order  as  the  folding  up  of  a  flower 
at  evening  ;  preparatory  for  a  new  unwinding  of  the 
system  of  nature  ;  of  its  higher  and  sweeter  efflores- 
cence out  of  the  immanent  life  of  God  and  a  more 
sublime  procession  of  the  heavenly  travellers  on  their 
endless  way  ? 

A  miracle  is  a  surprise,  —  but  to  whom  ?  To 
those,  of  course,  all  whose  habits  of  thinking  have 
been  formed  within  narrower  boundaries,  or  on  a 
lower  plane  of  existence  than  the  one  which  the  mir- 
acle breaks  open  to  their  gaze.  Plough  into  the  earth 
deep  enough  and  turn  over  the  furrows,  and  the 
earth-worms  writhe  in  their  distress,  brought  too 
suddenly  into  the  light  and  air.  So  with  us  when  a 
higher  realm  of  truth  breaks  upon  us  too  suddenly. 
There  are  habits  of  culture  which  only  develop  the 
natural  mind  ;  that  is  to  say  that  order  of  the  facul- 
ties which  hold  us  in  close  relationship  with  the  nat- 
ural world.  Those  faculties  may  be  sharpened  to  an 
indescribable  keenness,  till  the  intellect  penetrates 


MIRACLES,  27 

outward  into  space  and  downward  towards  the 
monads,  and  imagines  that  the  mysteries  of  the  uni- 
verse are  well-nigh  solved.  A  man,  perfected  exclu- 
sively in  this  sort  of  culture,  never  thinks  of  the  uni- 
verse as  more  than  one  story  high.  A  whole  people 
or  a  whole  period  of  time  may  be  educated  mainly 
to  habits  of  natural  thinking.  The  progress  of  the 
collective  human  mind  is  not  on  a  narrow  and 
straight  line ;  its  progress  is  like  that  of  a  .noble  ship 
freighted  with  the  wealth  of  all  the  zones,  but  which 
tacks  to  every  gale  and  makes  a  broad  belt  that 
ripples  the  whole  surface  of  the  sea.  The  ancient 
supernaturalism  was  without  science,  one-sided  and 
baseless,  and  so  running  into  driveling  superstitions. 
It  must  always  be  so  when  the  supernatural  is  not 
complemented  by  the  natural,  or  does  not  rest  upon 
its  solid  floors.  For  the  last  two  hundred  years,  the 
van  of  discovery  has  led  the  way  down  deeper  and 
deeper  into  sense,  till  the  great  verities  of  immortal- 
ity seem  like  a  floating  and  vanishing  tradition,  and 
miracle  is  synonymous  with  monster.  The  supernat- 
ural, no  longer  evolved  in  the  disclosures  of  an  irre- 
sistible Providence,  is  left  very  much  to  those  who 
knock  at  the  closed  doors  or  rap  out  responses  upon 
tables.  Meanwhile,  it  requires  small  gift  of  prophecy 
to  foretell  the  result.  As  surely  as  the  supernatural 
rests  on  the  natural  as  its  solid  flooring,  so  sure 
is  it  never  to  fall  through,  but  gain  security  by  all 
the  explorations  of  natural  law.     As  surely  as  body 


28  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

involves  spirit,  and  the  natural  world  involves  and 
exfigures  the  spiritual,  so  surely  is  the  most  perfect 
knowledge  of  natural  law  to  become  the  ground  of 
a  supernaturalism  reformed,  illustrated,  and  purified 
of  old  superstitions  and  errors.  The  age  has  veered 
so  far  senseward  that  we  may  conclude  it  has  touched 
its  boundary  line.  There  are  indications  that  the 
tacking  and  veering  towards  the  opposite  quarter 
have  begun  already,  and  the  only  apprehension  is 
that  the  refluent  wave  may  be  too  sudden  and  vio- 
lent. That  we  are  on  the  verge  of  a  new  epoch 
when  the  Spirit  of  God  will  utilize  the  accumulated 
knowledge  of  the  modern  age,  taking  up  science,  art, 
philosophy  into  a  higher  unity,  there  to  make  them 
resplendent  with  a  light  which  is  not  their  own,  and 
the  servitors  of  a  more  comprehending  and  adoring 
faith,  there  are  tokens  already  both  in  the  earth  and 
the  sky.  And  in  that  day,  when  the  supernatural 
and  the  natural,  no  longer  halved  and  sundered,  are 
harmonized  in  one,  we  shall  find  the  latter  the  me- 
dium through  which  the  other  appears  more  per- 
fectly ;  and  then  special  miracles  will  cease  only 
because  the  whole  Cosmos  is  miracle,  and  more 
intelligently  and  completely  than  to  the  eye  and  ear 
vf  Plato  reports  the  mind  of  the  Supreme  and  the 
music  of  the  upper  spheres. 

The  tendency  of  our  modern  thought  has  been  to 
narrow  in  the  domain  of  miracle,  and  finally  enclose 
It  by  the  boundaries  of  Palestine  and  the  first  and 


MIRACLES.  29 

last  decades  of  the  first  century.  Within  that  little 
province  of  earth  and  in  that  Long  Ago  you  may  be- 
lieve miraculous  power  was  adjoined  to  a  few  men  so 
as  to  enable  them  to  prove  certain  doctrines  of  re- 
ligion, and  especially  the  resurrection  and  the  future 
life.  Ever  since  all  demonstrations  from  a  higher 
world  are  to  be  ruled  out  as  pretense  and  imposture 
touching  on  the  special  domain  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Meanwhile  the  small  space  of  earth  and  the 
small  fragment  of  time  made  sacred  by  miracle,  re- 
cede in  the  dim  and  vanishing  past,  and  become  alto- 
gether spectral  to  the  natural  common  mind  ;  and  so 
the  idea  of  the  resurrection  and  immortality  belong 
to  the  speculations  of  ancient  days.  And  in  what 
way  has  this  growing  skepticism  been  prevented  from 
eclipsing  the  faith  of  mankind  altogether } 

The  personal  history  of  those  who  have  been 
caught  up  nearest  to  the  heart  of  God  would  perhaps 
show  that  the  disclosures  which  Strauss  calls  "  inter- 
ference," have  never  ceased  in  any  age  of  the  world. 
Miracle,  —  regarded  as  that  inner  and  open  door 
where  "  the  supernatural  comes  in,"  —  always  has 
been  and  always  will  be.  Its  form  and  its  methods 
may  change  as  the  world  changes,  but  the  substance 
and  reality  are  preserved.  Just  in  the  degree  that  an 
age  becomes  shut  in  by  sense,  the  sphere  of  miracle 
Is  withdrawn  from  the  gaze  of  the  street  and  the 
market-place,  and  from  all  physical  demonstration, 
to  that  realm  of  spirit,  where  only  the  heart  of  God 


30  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

beats  audibly  to  the  heart  and  ear  of  our  redeemed 
and  regenerate  humanity.  He  will  not  strive  nor 
cry  amid  the  coarse  dissonance  of  earthly  sounds, 
only  to  be  rejected  and  scorned.  But  the  work  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  spiritual  nature  of  man, 
melting  through  its  depravities  and  evolving  a  new 
creation  out  of  its  primal  chaos,  giving  to  it  ever 
clearer  openings, — this  has  been  the  miracle  wrought 
ever  anew  through  all  the  Christian  ages.  Said 
Jesus  to  the  people  who  were  amazed  at  his  power 
of  healing  the  sick.  Greater  works  than  these  will 
the  Father  do  that  ye  may  marvel ;  referring  to  that 
life  whose  throes  were  already  commencing  in  the 
spiritual  graves.  Those  who  have  been  caught  in- 
ward by  the  Spirit  of  God  and  sealed  by  its  power, 
will  often  tell  us,  not  aloud,  but  in  tears  and  in  trem- 
blings, lest  the  world  outside  should  hear  and  laugh, 
of  the  guidance  of  a  Divine  hand  never  out  of  sight, 
and  the  mouldings  of  a  Divine  power  more  wonder- 
ful than  that  which  projected  the  forces  of  nature. 
The  moral  creation,  though  rising  unseen  to  carnal 
eyes,  is  quite  as  miraculous  as  the  natural.  It  is  very 
interesting,  sometimes,  to  hear  not  only  individuals, 
but  families,  recount  their  history  ;  how  events  have 
been  shaped  and  unified  by  tractations  which  none 
but  they  could  see  ;  how  mountains  have  been  re- 
moved, and  brazen  bars  cut  in  two,  and  victories 
achieved  in  answer  to  the  prayer  of  faith  ;  how  amia 
conflicts   and   temptations  and   the   clouds   of  dust 


MIRACLES,  31 

which  have  risen  over  them  in  the  race  of  Hfe  they 
have  had  tokens  of  the  power  that  insphered  them, 
tenderly  moving  behind  a  veil  lest  its  too  great  glory 
should  drown  their  human  personality,  yet  making 
rents  here  and  there  where  watching  faces  looked 
through  ;  above  all,  in  those  hours  of  supreme  trial 
when  families  break  up  and  the  last  adieus  are 
spoken,  seeing  the  gates  flung  wide,  where  the  steps 
lead  away  from  earth  and  mortality  into  climes  where 
death  shall  be  no  more.  When  science  looks  upward 
instead  of  downward,  and  becomes  transfigured  in  a 
light  higher  than  its  own,  and  sees  all  its  facts  taken 
up  and  rearranged  under  laws  of  a  wider  and  more 
comprehending  unity,  the  earth  will  reflect  the  peace 
of  heaven  and  mirror  its  verities  anew,  repeating, 
though  on  planes  of  existence  vastly  broader  and 
more  secure,  the  times  of  which  Wordsworth  sings, 
when  the  Divine  Messengers  crowning  the  sovereign 
heights  of  the  world  — 

"Warbled  for  heaven  above  and  earth  below, 
Strains  suitable  for  both. ' 


III. 

THE   IMMANENCE    OF   GOD. 

T  F,  as  Christianity  assumes,  man  while  involved  in 
-*-  nature  and  clothed  in  its  forms,  is  at  the  same 
time  intrinsically  immortal,  and  as  such  is  to  be 
evolved  out  of  nature  and  rise  above  it,  it  follows 
that  he  is  the  subject  now  and  here  of  both  ranges 
of  existence.  He  is  natural  and  supernatural.  By 
his  natural  organs  he  is  placed  in  open  and  neces- 
sary relations  with  time  and  space ;  by  his  immortal 
faculties  he  is  placed  in  necessary  relations  with  a 
supersensible  world.  He  is  not  always  conscious  of 
these  higher  relations.  The  babe  is  locked  fast  in 
sense  and  knows  only  of  sensuous  things.  There 
are  those,  we  have  said,  who  scarcely  in  this  life  get 
released  from  this  despotic  grasp.  But  a  spiritual 
nature  with  its  unmeasured  possibilities,  is  in  abey- 
ance, securely  enfolded,  and  ready  under  the  appli- 
.ince  and  culture  adapted  to  it  to  open  down  into  the 
consciousness  and  arouse  the  soul  to  aspirations  and 
Teachings  towards  what  lies  beyond  nature  and  is  in- 
dependent of  her  growths  and  decays.  Hence  the 
iiivolution  of  the  sitpeTuatural  in  the  natural  and  the 
immanence  of  God  in  humanity.     On  the  first  awak- 


THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD.  33 

cning  of  a  consciousness,  higher  than  that  of  mere 
natural  life,  all  men  have  intuitive  notions  of  spirit- 
ual and  divine  things.  Then  into  every  soul  comes 
an  influx  of  the  supernatural,  and  breathings  from 
the  Lord,  which  are  deeper  than  all  human  teachings, 
and  without  which  all  human  teachings  were  in  vain. 
Our  minds  open  inward  as  well  as  outward,  and 
thence  run  along  into  our  souls  as  on  electric  wires 
the  tidings  that  are  not  of  earth ;  inspirations  of  God 
of  a  moral  law  and  of  a  life  to  come.  Were  it  not  for 
these  inspirations,  the  eternal  life  might  as  well  be 
preached  to  trees  and  animals  as  to  human  beings. 
Granted  Mr.  John  Stewart  Mills'  theory  of  "  associa- 
tion "  and  cumulative  traditions ;  they  must  have 
had  a  clear  solid  ground  to  start  from,  a  native  stock 
to  be  grafted  upon,  or  they  might  just  as  well  have 
started  from  the  coral  or  the  oyster  as  from  a  human 
soul.  There  was  at  the  beginning  the  involution  of 
the  supernatural  in  the  natural,  else  we  might  teach 
and  preach  to  all  eternity  and  get  no  evolution  ; 
there  must  be  the  immanence  of  God  in  man,  and  he 
must  be  capable  of  becoming  conscious  of  it,  else  we 
might  just  as  well  offer  symbols  of  worship  to  the 
bats  and  owls  as  to  men  and  women.  With  all  alike 
this  is  the  prime  ground  of  culture,  from  the  first 
bishop  of  Christendom  to  the  half  idiot  savages  of 
Sidney  Cove.  These  divine  instincts,  therefore,  pos- 
sible or  actual,  are  in  every  man  ;  for  every  man  as 
to  his  interior  mind  belongs  to  a  spiritual  world  and 
3 


34  Tim  FOURTH  GOSPEj^. 

is  capable  of  being  placed  in  communion  with  eternal 
things.  But  let  us  discriminate.  When  we  say  that 
God  is  immanent  in  humanity,  we  do  not  mean  that 
the  Divine  Substance  is  included  in  man.  The 
Christian  conception  of  God,  as  we  apprehend  it,  is, 
that  from  the  Divine  Substance  and  personahty  are 
the  forthgoing  energies  that  fill  the  circuit  of  his 
universe,  so  that  all  things  in  their  inmost  nature  are 
receptive  of  them  and  exist  by  them.  This  influx 
from  the  Divine  Personality  is  not  to  be  confounded 
with  that  personality  itself  If  God  were  present  per- 
sonally in  nature  and  not  by  influx,  then  nature  itself 
were  one  great  Fetish,  and  the  idolaters  were  right 
who  worshipped  the  sun  and  the  stars.  If  God  were 
in  man  personally  or  by  his  own  essence,  man  him- 
self would  be  God,  and  not  his  dependent  creature, 
receptive  of  Divine  inspirations.  In  man  and  in  na- 
ture alike,  in  the  child  at  play  and  in  the  flower 
which  he  plucks  from  its  stem,  there  is  the  unceas- 
ing influx  of  the  Divine,  and  out  of  this  they  draw 
their  breath,  and  suck  the  life  that  warms  and  feeds 
them.  But  nature  is  not  conscious  of  this  Divine  life 
out  of  which  it  grows  and  blossoms  ;  man,  when  his 
higher  consciousness  is  opened,  has  convictions,  de- 
sires, and  aspirations,  which  he  knows  must  come 
from  Divine  imbreathings  and  urgencies  ;  and  so  he 
bows  and  worships  and  returns  to  God  the  love 
which  he  receives.  This  distinction  between  influx 
and  personality,  between  the  Divine  immanence  and 


THE  IMMANENCE   OF  GOD.  35 

the  Divine  essence,  though  sometimes  lost  sight  of, 
we  think  is  plain  and  obvious.  It  should  be  kept 
steadily  in  view,  as  we  shall  see  by  and  by,  if  we 
do  not  see  already  in  the  naked  statement  itself 
that  the  distinction  saves  us  from  fetishism  when  we 
make  God  immanent  in  nature,  and  from  pantheism 
when  we  make  Him  immanent  in  both  nature  and 
man. 

It  hence  becomes  very  plain,  too,  what  we  mean 
when  we  speak  of  intuitions  of  God,  or  inward  be- 
holdings  of  the  Deity.  Construed  literally  it  has  no 
meaning  whatever,  except  to  the  pantheist  himself. 
Intuition  is  simply  the  survey  which  one  takes  of  the 
contents  of  his  own  consciousness.  It  is  to  the  in- 
ternal phenomena  of  mind,  what  perception  is  to  the 
external  phenomena  of  nature.  Perception,  if  it  be 
clear  and  accurate,  gives  you  what  lies  without  you 
in  sharp  outline  and  just  perspective  ;  intuition,  if  it 
be  clear  and  accurate,  catalogues  aright  the  facts  of 
consciousness  in  your  experience,  intellectual  and 
spiritual,  and  gives  the  soul's  perspectives  to  itself. 
Of  course  there  can  be  no  intuition  of  God,  since  He 
is  not  included  in  the  contents  of  consciousness,  and 
could  not  be,  without  the  destruction  of  the  human 
identity  and  personality.  Our  mental  perspectives, 
present  or  possible,  opened  already,  or  which  may  be 
opened,  give  us  our  own,  and  the  limit  where  they 
fade  off  and  dissolve  in  darkness,  is  precisely  where 
our  identity  and  personality  terminate. 


36  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

But  though  God  Himself  can  never  be  the  content 
of  the  human  consciousness,  his  highest  and  best 
work  can  be.  My  consciousness  at  one  time  may 
give  me  an  inward  scene  of  moral  ruin  and  disorder. 
I  may  see  a  creation  rise  out  of  this  chaos  more 
goodly  and  fair  than  the  order  of  external  nature  ; 
changes  may  be  going  on  within,  more  auspicious 
than  all  the  ongoings  without ;  experiences  more  rich 
than  the  regalements  of  sense  ;  a  sunshine  from  the 
divine  face  more  bright  than  summer  glories  ;  a  peace 
more  sweet  than  the  tranquillity  of  the  morning ;  af- 
fections purged  of  self  and  enlarged  to  universal  love  ; 
calls  to  duty  more  loud  and  clear  than  matin  bells  ; 
strength  to  suffer  and  to  do  that  comes  by  prayer  ;  a 
power  back  of  my  personal  volitions,  transfusing  my 
whole  being  and  creating  it  anew  ;  convictions  of 
truth  growing  bright  to  the  perfect  day ;  all  these  may 
come  within  the  range  of  my  intuitions,  and  beget  a 
faith  in  God  which  nothing  can  shake,  and  a  knowl- 
edge of  his  goodness  and  power  worth  more  than  all 
the  deductions  of  the  understanding.  It  comes  not 
from  inward  beholdings  of  the  Deity,  but  of  what  He 
does  ;  beholdings  of  such  work  of  grace  and  power 
as  I  can  ascribe  to  neither  man  nor  angel,  and  which 
bring  repose  under  the  shadow  of  his  wings. 


PART   I. 

THE   HISTORICAL   ARGUMENT. 


'One  do  I  see  and  twelve  ;  but  second  there 
Methinks  I  know  thee,  thou  beloved  one  ; 
Not  for  thy  nobler  port,  for  there  are  none 
More  quiet-featured.    Some  there  are  who  bear 
Their  message  on  their  brows ;   while  others 
A  look  of  large  commission,  nor  will  shun 
The  fiery  trial  so  their  work  is  done. 
But  thou  hast  parted  with  thine  eyes  in  prayer, 
Unearthly  are  they  both  ;   and  so  thy  lips 
Seem  like  the  porches  of  the  Spirit-land; 
For  thou  hast  laid  a  mighty  treasure  by 
Unlocked  by  Him  in  Nature,  and  thine  eye 
Burns  with  a  vision  and  apocalypse 
Thy  own  sweet  soul  can  hardly  understand." 


CHAPTER   I. 

GNOSTICISM. 

'THHE  problem  of  evil  has  always  been  the  most 
-*-  stubborn  and  difficult,  whether  without  Chris- 
tianity, or  within  it,  and  under  its  resolving  light.  No 
Pelagian  theories  can  relieve  the  burdened  conscious^ 
ness  from  the  fact  of  inhering  corruption.  It  has 
existed  under  every  form  of  religion,  from  that  of  the 
Hindus  down  to  the  last  modification  of  New  Eng- 
land Calvinism  ;  and  the  wit  of  man  has  been  taxed 
to  the  utmost  so  to  dispose  of  the  fact  as  to  clear 
the  divine  character  of  all  responsibility  about  it. 

It  was  this  laudable  motive  which  gave  rise  to  the 
most  daring  system  of  speculation  known  in  the  his- 
tory of  opinions.  That  system  began  to  appear  soon 
after  the  ascension  of  Christ,  and  grew  into  gigantic 
proportions  by  the  middle  of  the  second  century  It 
was  the  most  formidable  heresy  that  threatened 
Christianity,  and  overlaid  its  first  purity  ;  and  though 
finally  thrown  off,  and  left  behind,  it  imparted  to 
Christianity  a  direction  and  coloring  which  it  had  for 
centuries,  and  of  which  it  is  not  wholly  relieved  to 
this  day.  There  are  unmistakable  allusions  to  it  in 
Paul's  epistles  ;  it  is  a  clearly  established  fact  that 


40  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  Apostle  John  came  in  contact  with  it ;  it  is  openly 
assailed  in  the  epistle  which  bears  his  name ;  and 
portions  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  quite  unintelligible 
otherwise,  are  tolerably  well  understood  when  we 
know  that  they  were  written  with  the  haunting  pres- 
ence of  this  growing  heresy.  The  argument  for  the 
genuineness  of  the  fourth  Gospel  cannot  be  seen  in 
its  entire  force  without  some  knowledge  of  the  con- 
temporaneous Gnostic  opinions. 

Gnosticism  was  a  composite  of  at  least  four  other 
religions,  —  Parseeism,  once  the  dominant  religion  of 
Persia ;  Hellenism,  as  modified  by  Plato ;  Judaism  ; 
and  Christianity.  These  four  were  variously  com- 
bined ;  and,  according  to  the  proportions  of  the  mix- 
ture, the  new  compound  very  much  resembled  Chris- 
tianity, and  did  not  greatly  obscure  its  essential 
truths  ;  or  it  so  distorted  and  annulled  them  that 
their  native  simplicity,  power,  and  beauty,  were  en- 
tirely gone. 

Gnosticism  was  an  attempt  to  combine  Dualism 
with  Christianity.  Dualism  asserts  the  doctrine  of 
two  original  eternal  principles  of  good  and  evil ; 
hence  two  primal  uncreated  realms  of  Light  and 
Darkness,  of  immaculate  purity  and  essential  de- 
pravity. One  was  the  realm  of  pure  spirit,  at  the 
head  of  which  was  God  Himself;  the  other  was  the 
realm  of  matter,  —  dark,  chaotic,  and  evil.  These 
two  eternal,  original  principles  lie  at  the  foundation 
of  the  Parsee  religion ;  and  with  equal  distinctness 


GNOSTICISM,  41 

though  with  less  active  antagonism,  they  are  the 
basis  of  Plato's  philosophy  as  developed  in  the  Ti- 
maeus.  This  DuaUsm  invaded  Christianity, — from 
Persia  through  Syria  and  the  Syrian  Theosophists ; 
from  Plato's  philosophy  through  Alexandria  and  its 
Platonizing  Jews  and  Christians.  They  formed  a 
composite  which  we  will  briefly  describe,  inasmuch  as 
it  has  an  important  bearing  on  the  exposition  and 
evidence  of  the  fourth  Gospel. 

For  a  long  period  the  boundary  line  between  these 
two  kingdoms  of  Good  and  Evil  had  not  been  passed 
over.  Each  existed  apart  in  its  own  isolation,  —  one 
in  its  transcendent  excellence  and  glory  ;  the  other 
as  the  outlying  chaos,  conceived  sometimes  as  inert 
and  dead,  sometimes  as  seething  with  corruption, 
always  as  disorderly  and  wild.  But  it  was  inevitable 
that  the  kingdom  of  light  should  approach  nearer  and 
ever  nearer  the  kingdom  of  darkness.  For  God  — 
the  primal  infinite  good  —  was  ever  sending  out 
emanations  from  Himself  These  at  length  hypos- 
tasized  in  the  angelic  powers  that  circled  Him  about 
and  stood  nearest  to  his  throne.  But  out  of  these 
highest  and  nearest  of  the  heavenly  powers  came 
forth  emanations  in  turn,  and  these  hypostasized  far- 
ther out  and  lower  down.  From  these  latter  came 
forth  other  emanations  ;  and,  with  every  remove  from 
the  infinite  original  source,  the  eternal  perfections 
were  reflected  more  dimly.  Of  course  these  waves  of 
emanation  can  be  extended  indefinitely  ;  and  you  can 


42  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

cogitate  any  number  of  heavens  to  suit  your  fancy,  — 
from  the  inner  circle,  most  resplendent  about  the 
throne,  to  the  outermost  limit,  the  Chinese  wall  of 
the  upper  celestials  that  bounds  them  from  chaotic 
darkness  and  death.  These  powers  thus  created  suc- 
cessively were  called  ^ons,  and  the  whole  realm, 
from  the  centre  to  the  circumference,  was  the  Divine 
Pleroma,  because  within  these  limits  God  reigned  in 
the  fullness  and  completeness  of  his  perfections. 

Thus  far  there  was  no  mixture  of  the  two  realms. 
But  at  length  the  emanations  streamed  over  the  Chi- 
nese wall  into  the  realm  of  dark,  dead,  chaotic  mat- 
ter. The  angel  on  the  outermost  limit  rayed  into  it, 
and  fructified  it.  Hence  a  new  world  arose,  —  this 
world  we  l»ve  in  of  mingled  good  and  evil.  It  was 
not  created  by  God,  the  supremely  good,  who  never 
appears  directly  and  openly  in  it ;  it  was  formed  by 
the  angel  who  was  lowest  down  and  next  to  it ;  whose 
emanations  streamed  into  it,  and  took  on  a  covering 
of  matter.  Hence  this  angel  was  called  the  World- 
former.  Or,  again,  he  was  called  the  Logos,  or  Word, 
because  a  ray  from  his  reason  pierced  the  realm  of 
matter,  and  took  its  clothing  thence.  Hence  the 
complex  nature  of  man.  His  most  external  nature  is 
material.  It  is  the  hylic  coat  which  he  wears,  always 
corrupt  and  poisonous,  the  seat  of  all  his  temptations 
ind  woes.  Within  this  is  his  soul,  which  is  an  ema- 
nation from  the  angel  World-former,  and  therefore  his 
psychical  or  soul-nature  is  a  ground  of  communion, 


GNOSTICISM.  43 

not  with  the  Supreme  Good,  but  only  with  the  World- 
former  who  made  him  and  ranks  just  above  him. 

There  is  in  man,  however,  as  in  the  ^ons  or  angels 
above  him,  an  inmost  principle  of  the  supremely  good 
and  perfect.  Because  every  tier  of  being  which  cre- 
ates a  next  lower  one  is  a  medium,  though  uncon- 
sciously, of  the  infinite  and  primal  life,  and  that  hfc 
therefore  is  immanent  in  all  created  things.  But, 
before  it  has  reached  man,  it  becomes  imbedded  un- 
der so  many  strata  that  it  comes  not  generally  into 
the  consciousness.  Hence  the  Logos,  or  World- 
former,  who  made  us  and  all  terrestrial  things,  and 
who  is  the  immediate  ruler  of  this  lower  sphere,  while 
he  thinks  he  made  it  and  rules  it  from  himself,  is 
really  and  unconsciously  the  organ  and  instrumen- 
tality of  the  Supreme  Divinity.  Hence  man  has  a 
threefold  nature,  —  the  hylic  or  fleshly  one,  which  is 
outermost ;  the  soul-nature,  which  is  next  inward, 
and  which  is  an  emanation  of  the  World-former ;  and 
the  deepest  and  inmost  of  all,  buried  far  beneath  the 
consciousness  of  common  men,  the  spiritual  or  pneu- 
matic nature,  which  is  the  pure  emanation  of  God 
himself. 

The  sum  is,  this  is  too  bad  a  world  to  be  regarded 
as  the  handiwork  of  a  perfect  Being.  The  essential 
evil  of  matter,  and  hence  the  utter  depravity  of  the 
ileshly  nature,  lie  at  the  foundation  of  all  the  Gnostic 
systems. 

It  will  be  seen  at  once  how  Christianity,  on  the 


44  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

side  of  Judaism,  holds  out  an  irresistible  lure  to  the 
first  theosophist  who  might  choose  to  dovetail  Gnos- 
ticism into  it.  The  wonder  is  that  they  did  not  in- 
terpenetrate so  tenaciously  as  to  defy  the  wit  of  the 
Ch  irch  fathers  to  break  them  off  from  each  other 
and  keep  them  asunder.  The  problem  of  evil,  if  not 
solved,  was  at  least  artfully  dodged,  at  a  time  when  it 
was  the  hardest  and  the  sorest ;  when  the  whole  cre- 
ation was  groaning  and  travailing  in  pain.  The  Di- 
vine character  stands  clear  of  all  responsibility  touch- 
ing its  origin.  Not  only  so,  but  the  Old  Testament 
history,  and  the  whole  dispensation  of  Judaism,  the 
stumbling-block  of  the  Christian  believer,  can  now  be 
fitted  in  with  Christianity  with  marvelous  symmetry. 
Nothing  is  easier.  The  God  of  the  Old  Testament, 
sternly  just,  sometimes  with  changeful  passion  and 
consuming  anger,  was  not  the  God  of  Christianity, 
but  the  World-former  himself,  ruling  his  own  king- 
dom and  trying  to  hold  it  in  its  wild  disorder.  Con- 
fessedly, the  Being  who  fashioned  this  world,  arid 
governs  it,  is  the  Jehovah-angel  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. See  thus  how  the  threefold  nature  of  man  is 
marvelously  displayed  !  The  heathen  —  lost  in  thick 
darkness,  and  worshipping  devils  —  are  those  on 
whom  the  hylic  coat  of  sense  and  matter  hangs  thick 
and  heavy  ;  and  the  soul-nature,  even,  is  lost  under 
it,  and  comes  not  into  consciousness.  Only  a  few 
chosen  people  have  had  this  consciousness  awakened 
and  so  brought  into  acknowledged  relations  with  the 


CNOSTlCliiM.  45 

World-former  who  governs  them.  These  are  the 
Jews,  —  not  the  chosen  people  of  the  Supreme  God 
but  of  the  World-former,  who  has  parted  them  off, 
and,  with  constant  watching  and  sore  trials  of  his 
patience,  keeps  them  in  external  order  by  rigor- 
ous commandments  and  temporal  judgments.  The 
World-former,  with  his  Jews,  expected  a  Messiah  ; 
but  it  was  only  a  temporal  one,  who  was  to  extend, 
not  his  own  reign,  but  that  of  the  World-former  him- 
self The  Messiah  was  to  be  his  subject  and  con- 
quering vicegerent.  A  few,  however,  there  were 
whose  pneumatic  or  deepest  natures  had  been  touched 
and  vitalized.  Beneath  the  covering  of  flesh  and 
sense,  beneath  even  the  soul-nature  itself,  a  chord 
was  touched  in  their  profounder  contemplations 
whose  vibrations  thrilled  beyond  the  World-former, 
even  up  to  the  First  Good,  First  Perfect,  and  First 
Fair,  and  gave  them  communings  with  the  Highest. 
Such  minds  were  choice  and  few  ;  but  they  waited 
and  watched  for  the  true  Christ,  and  they  indicated 
his  possible  achievement  in  human  nature.  By  this 
clever  dovetailing,  Christianity  is  relieved  of  all  diffi- 
culty arising  from  its  connection  with  Judaism,  and 
Judaism  adjusts  itself  easily  in  a  grand  system  of  the 
Universe. 

The  World-former  does  not  know  that  there  is  a 
sovereign  hand  that  uses  him  and  turns  him  whither 
it  will.  He  thinks  he  is  acting  only  from  himself  and 
for  himself,  and  never  dreams  that  he  is  preparing 


4^  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  way  for  a  higher  ^on  to  come  and  supersede 
him.  But  such  is  the  fact,  and  in  the  fullness  of  time 
the  pneumatic  Christ  appears.  But  He  must  not  t«ike 
upon  him  our  flesh  and  blood.  Nothing  could  be 
more  abhorrent  to  Gnosticism  than  to  bring  the 
Highest  in  contact  with  corrupt  and  poisonous  mat- 
ter. His  immaculate  purity  must  be  kept  clear  of  its 
stains.  How,  then,  can  the  Christ,  either  as  the 
Highest  himself,  or  as  his  first  -^on,  get  introduced 
into  this  bad  world  to  save  it .?  In  either  of  two 
ways. 

Jesus  Christ  was,  in  fact,  two  persons  in  one. 
Jesus  was  a  mere  man  of  Jewish  descent,  born  like 
any  other  man.  But  he  was  of  pious  disposition, 
and  went  to  the  Jordan  to  be  baptized.  Then  the 
^on  Christ  descended,  and  entered  him,  and  acted 
and  spake  through  him  ;  and  so  from  that  period  his 
marvelous  history  unfolds,  and  the  wisdom  of  God 
drops  from  his  lips.  The  Jews  arraigned  and  cruci- 
fied the  man  Jesus.  They  thought  to  have  killed  the 
Christ,  but  him  they  could  not  touch.  Before  the 
crucifixion  the  iEon  Christ  re-ascended  to  his  skies, 
and  only  a  man  like  us  died  upon  the  cross.  Hence 
his  exclamation  in  that  awful  hour  after  the  God  had 
gone  up  and  left  him,  "  Why  hast  thou  forsaken 
me  ? " 

Or  there  is  another  way  by  which  Gnosticism, 
always  abhorring  the  touch  of  matter,  eludes  the 
aifficulty.    Some  Gnostics  held  that  Jesus  Christ  was 


GNOSTICISM.  47 

one  person,  but  that  there  was  no  incarnation  at  all; 
that  He  did  not  come  in  the  flesh,  but  only  in  divine 
shapes  that  took  its  image  and  likeness.  The  angels 
of  the  Old  Testament,  they  said,  were  not  material 
forms,  but  celestial  substances  taking  on  the  appear- 
ances of  the  human  figure.  Even  so  the  Christ  that 
appeared  in  Palestine  was  not  clothed  in  veritable 
flesh  and  blood,  but  only  in  its  semblance  and  effigy ; 
for  it  is  in  the  power  of  God  at  any  time  to  evolve 
this  appearance  out  of  Himself,  and  project  it  into 
this  lower  world.  The  Jews  thought  they  crucified 
a  man  :  but  therein  were  they  deceived,  and  their 
impotent  rage  defeated ;  for  the  agony  and  the  death 
were  only  phantasmic,  while  the  real  Christ  within 
the  outward  semblance  was  untouched  by  the  spear 
and  the  nails. 

Not  all  men  can  rise  out  of  hylic  darkness,  or  out  of 
the  hard  service  of  the  World-former,  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  pneumatic  Christ  and  communion  with 
the  Highest.  It  is  only  those  whose  inmost  natures 
have  been  quickened  and  unfolded.  These  can  ap- 
peal to  their  highest  consciousness.  They  have 
done  with  the  poor  outward  letter  of  the  Jewish 
World-former,  and  have  intuitions  of  the  supreme 
Deity.  They  look  down  with  pity  upon  those  still 
held  in  bondage,  whether  to  the  Jewish  letter  or  to 
the  poisonous  coverings  of  flesh  and  sense. 

Gnosticism  prevailed  extensively  during  the  second 
century,  and  did  not  become  extinct  before  the  mid- 


48  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

die  of  the  fourth.  Men  of  wealth,  nobility,  and  in- 
telligence, embraced  Christianity  under  some  Gnos- 
tic form  ;  for  it  fostered  mightily  that  serene  self- 
complacency  which  makes  men  well-pleasing  to  them- 
selves, and  lifts  them  above  their  fellows.  It  exerted, 
however,  other  and  more  lasting  influences.  Its 
prime  article,  the  essential  evil  of  matter  as  the  dead- 
liest foe  of  the  internal  man,  led  on  to  asceticism  and 
the  maceration  of  the  flesh.  It  made  marriage  odious, 
^M  all  sensual  pleasure  corrupting  and  vile  ;  it  made 
afl  nature  but  a  blight,  an  incumbent  curse  upon  the 
spirit ;  and  either  its  direct  influence,  or  the  ground 
principle  out  of  which  it  grew  and  flourished,  sent  the 
monks  into  the  monasteries  or  the  deserts,  doomed 
the  priests  to  celibacy,  and  wrenched  human  nature 
itself  into  frightful  distortions.  The  Church  excluded 
Gnosticism,  but  not  till  its  virus  had  entered  her 
veins  and  exerted  a  potent  influence  in  shaping  both 
her  theology  and  institutions.  Augustine,  her  great- 
est theologian,  came  into  the  Church  out  of  one  of 
the  forms  of  Gnosticism,  and  through  him  it  flings 
its  long  shadow  down  the  centuries,  even  over  the 
theology  of  the  modern  age. 

Not  only  the  orthodox,  but  the  heretic  theologies 
were  sometimes  determined  either  directly  by  Gnos- 
tic influence  or  by  the  fundamental  principle  from 
which  it  comes.  Arianism  is  not  a  system  of  dual 
ism  :  it  does  not  assert  an  eternal  primitive  matter  ; 
but  it  abhors  to  bring  God  in  contact  with  matter 


GNOSTICISM.  49 

and  so  makes  Christ  a  sub-deity  or  ^on  under  him, 
created  out  of  nothing,  that  he  in  turn  might  create 
the  world  and  become  incarnate  in  time.  Therefore 
nature  would  not  lead  us  directly  up  to  the  supreme 
God,  but  to  the  sub-deity  who  created  nature,  who 
became  incarnate  within  it,  who  intercedes  for  us, 
while  the  Supreme  himself  dwells  apart,  never  pass- 
ing over  into  the  finite  except  through  the  mediating 
Christ  and  his  angels. 

The  Gnostics  began  to  appear  soon  after  the  ascen- 
sion of  Christ,  and  during  the  second  century  their 
spread  was  rapid  and  wide.  Gibbon  says  they  "  cov- 
ered both  Egypt  and  Asia."  They  were  polite,  learned, 
and  wealthy,  and  highly  self-exalted.  They  had  their 
congregations,  their  bishops  and  doctors,  and  some- 
times mingled  imperceptibly  and  extensively  among 
the  congregations  of  the  faithful.  They  condescend- 
ingly accepted  Christianity  in  full  ;  but,  as  they  drew 
it  up  and  absorbed  it  in  their  own  pneumatic  con- 
sciousness, they  held  it  sublimed  in  a  higher  Gnosis, 
—  a  very  different  religion  from  that  of  the  vulgar 
Christian  multitude  around  them.  They  were  shy  of 
martyrdom,  and  could  evade  the  authorities.  They 
could  not  always  be  distinguished  from  the  Catholic 
Christians,  with  whom  they  had  no  hesitation  to  com- 
mune and  worship ;  but  there  was  one  subject  by 
which  they  could  generally  be  discovered  and  sifted 
out.  If  questioned  touching  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead,  they  would  "  look  foolish,"  says  Tertullian,  and 
4 


50  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

finally  disclose  themselves.  The  resurrection  of  the 
material  body  was  abhorrent  to  their  whole  system 
of  faith. 

Of  course  such  a  system,  ramifying  into  the  most 
vital  part  of  Christianity,  adhering  as  a  parasite, 
and  threatening  to  suck  its  life-blood,  was  not  ex- 
truded and  left  behind  without  sharp  and  persistent 
controversy.  The  controversy  begins  with  Paul,  who 
gives  a  side-blow  here  and  there  at  the  incipient 
heresy ;  John  stops  in  his  exhortations  of  brotherly 
love  to  launch  his  anathemas  against  it ;  Polycarp, 
the  disciple  of  John,  and  the  saintly  martyr,  ascribes 
it  to  Satan  ;  Irenasus,  the  disciple  of  Polycarp,  wrote 
to  refute  it ;  and  Tertullian,  at  the  close  of  the  sec- 
ond century,  employed  his  rough  and  fiery  eloquence 
to  denounce  it. 


CHAPTER     II. 

SAINT  JOHN   AT   EPHESUS. 

*pERHAPS  no  country  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
has  been  the  centre  of  influences  more  subtile 
and  pervading  than  Ionia,  so  far  as  those  influences 
have  been  extended  by  means  of  Uterature.  It  shaped 
the  intellect  of  the  world  in  its  finest  moulds,  for  it 
was  plastic  over  the  mind  of  Greece ;  it  has  deter- 
mined most  profoundly  its  religious  culture,  for  those 
writings  of  the  Christian  canon  which  appealed  to  the 
deeper  consciousness  were  produced  within  its  trans- 
parent and  inspiring  ethers.  In  our  gross  and  sleepy 
occidentalism  we  constantly  lose  sight  of  the  educa- 
tive power  of  nature  under  conditions  such  as  we 
have  never  experienced  and  hardly  imagined,  over 
those  minds  which  have  produced  the  master-pieces 
in  art,  in  literature,  and  in  religion.  This  little  Greek 
province  of  Ionia  has  given  us  Homer  and  the  Iliad, 
and  made  all  other  poetry  but  a  broken  strain  ;  it 
has  given  us  the  fourth  Gospel  and  the  Apocalypse, 
which  find  us  at  the  close  of  eighteen  centuries 
veiling  our  sight  before  the  too  burning  disclosures 
of  the  Godhead.  It  has  given  us  a  language  whose 
sound  is   music   and  whose    touch   can    bring  the 


52  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

subtlest  thought  within  its  soft  and  delicate  shadings. 
If  it  is  bad  philosophy  to  say  with  Mr.  Buckle  that 
man  with  his  culture  and  his  religions  is  the  mere 
product  of  his  environments,  so  it  is  equally  bad 
to  say  that  God  is  only  a  great  Magician,  who  works 
without  means  and  without  law,  and  not  the  Infinite 
Providence  who  works  both  within  man  and  around 
him  by  his  immanence  in  both  nature  and  humanity. 
Ionia  lay  upon  the  western  coast  of  Asia  Minor, 
mainly  between  two  rivers,  though  extending  a  little 
beyond  them  ;  the  Hermus  on  the  north  and  the 
Meander  on  the  south.  It  was  about  one  hundred 
miles  in  length,  and  less  than  half  that  average  dis- 
tance in  breadth,  therefore  comprising  less  territory 
than  the  little  State  of  Massachusetts.  Two  beauti- 
ful islands  belonged  to  it,  separated  from  it  by  narrow 
straits  ;  Chios  towards  the  north,  and  Samos  towards 
the  south.  Besides  the  two  rivers  already  named, 
there  is  a  third,  the  Cayster,  which  flows  between 
them,  at  whose  mouth  stood  the  city  of  Ephesus. 
These  three  rivers  find  their  way  to  the  sea  through 
valleys  of  surpassing  fertility,  and  the  coast  from 
river  to  river  is  skirted  by  a  belt  of  land,  winding 
with  the  winding  coast,  fronting  the  islands  which 
lie  off  as  gems  upon  the  sea,  teeming  with  luxuriance 
and  gleaming  in  the  gorgeous  beauty  of  an  oriental 
clime.  Its  climate,  though  the  most  charming  in  the 
world,  is  not  one  which  melts  and  debilitates.  Its 
brilliant  atmosphere  taken  into  human  lungs,  is    a 


ST.   JOHN  AT  EPHESUS.  SI 

perpetual  stimulus,  sparkling  through  the  blood  and 
through  the  brain,  and  thence  through  the  soul  itself, 
to  sharpen  its  faculties  and  inspire  its  imaginative 
powers. 

This  was  Ionia ;  colonized  from  the  selectest  por- 
tion of  the  Greek  race,  a  thousand  years  before 
Christ.  Twelve  Greek  cities  rose  along  the  coast, 
and  upon  the  two  islands,  confederate  for  the  pur- 
poses of  government  and  religion,  and  the  common 
life  and  culture  which  give  birth  to  art  and  literature. 
Architecture  attained  here  its  finishing  grace  in  the 
Ionic  column.  Genius  not  only  sung  its  sublimest 
epic  in  the  Iliad,  but  language  itself,  newly  modu- 
lated, had  a  breezy  lightness  and  softness  in  the 
Ionian  lyrics  which  became  the  models  of  Greece. 

Mark  the  indentation  of  the  coast  and  the  islands 
by  which  Ionia  opens  towards  the  ^gean,  and  in- 
vites the  commerce  of  the  world  !  Mark  the  three 
rivers  winding  through  fertile  meadows  by  which  it 
opens  into  the  interior  of  Asia.  By  a  magnificent 
Roman  road  which  crossed  the  table-lands  of  Phrygia, 
and  passed  over  the  ridge  of  Taurus  even  to  the  river 
Euphrates,  the  cities  of  Ionia  became  the  marts  of 
an  immense  trade  which  set  from  the  interior  to- 
wards the  Mediterranean  sea.  Consequently  this 
little  Greek  confederacy,  though  small  in  territory, 
became  the  centre  of  a  widely-extended  influence 
upon  oriental  life,  religion,  and  manners. 

Ephesus  was  the  metropolis  of  Ionia,  and  under 


54  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  Empire  was  the  chief  city  of  proconsular  Asia. 
It  stood  at  the  mouth  of  the  Cayster,  on  the  southern 
bank  of  the  river,  extending  over  a  wide  plain  and  up 
the  slopes  of  a  mountain  ridge  called  Coressus, 
which  shut  it  in  from  the  south,  and  up  the  slopes  of 
another  ridge  on  the  right,  called  Mount  Prion, 
which  shut  it  in  from  the  east.  Within  this  brief 
space  the  oriental  Greek  wantoned  and  reveled,  as 
if  life  were  given  for  a  perpetual  holiday,  and  its  main 
business  were  to  enjoy  the  charms  of  earth  and  sky, 
and  breathe  the  exhilarating  airs.  Near  the  banks 
of  the  river  northeast  of  the  city,  rose  the  temple  of 
Diana,  one  of  the  seven  wonders  of  the  world,  with 
its  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  columns  sixty  feet 
high,  each  the  gift  of  a  king,  and  in  which  the  Ionic 
style  of  architecture  culminated  in  its  highest  perfec- 
tion. On  the  side  of  Mount  Prion  was  the  theatre, 
with  its  immense  circular  rows  of  seats  rising  one 
above  another,  open  to  the  brilliant  sky,  crowded 
often  with  the  vast  multitudes,  not  always  like  the 
mob  who  shouted  "  Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephesians," 
but  answering  with  acclamations  to  music  and  song, 
sometimes  perhaps  to  works  of  genius  in  a  language 
whose  vowel  sounds  made  it  the  softest  and  sweetest 
that  ever  fell  upon  human  ears.  Southeast  of  the 
city  and  between  Coressus  and  Prion  was  the  gymna- 
sium, where  the  exuberant  life  overflowed  in  athletic 
games.  The  annual  festival  held  in  honor  of  Diana, 
exhibited  the  rites  of  the  Greek  oriental  religion 


SAINT  JOfIN  AT  EPHESUS.  55 

What  a  contrast  to  our  Puritan  solemnity  and  sobri- 
ety !  It  was  called  "  the  common  meeting  of  Asia." 
It  was  held  through  the  month  of  May,  and  it  drew 
throngs  of  devotees  with  their  wives  and  children, 
no  I  only  from  along  the  coast  but  from  far  away  in 
the  interior,  who  came  for  dance  and  song,  for  the 
amusements  of  the  theatre  and  the  gymnasium,  for 
the  rites  of  Diana,  whose  image  was  enshrined  within 
the  long,  brilliant  rows  of  colonnades,  where  came  the 
vast  and  winding  processions  of  joyous  worshippers. 
The  Asian  Diana  personified  the  all-fructifying  and 
nourishing  powers  of  nature,  and  hence  her  festival 
was  held  in  the  vernal  season,  when  all  nature  was 
storming  into  life,  and  it  made  the  days  and  nights 
of  the  month  of  May  "  one  long  scene  of  revelry."  ^ 

Partly  within  the  limits  of  Ionia,  partly  just  be- 
yond in  the  neighboring  provinces,  were  the  cities 
which  were  to  contain  the  seven  churches,  holding 
"the  seven  golden  candlesticks,"  to  bear  aloft  the 
light  of  Christianity  to  this  portion  of  the  eastern 
world.  Not  very  far  off  is  the  little  island  of  Pat- 
mos,  unlike  the  others  which  gem  the  waters  with 
green,  but  rising  as  a  bald  and  barren  rock  out  of 
(he  ^gean  sea. 

We  have  said  enough  fully  to  possess  our  readers 
Arith  the  idea  of  the  vast  importance  of  Ephesus  as 
one  of  the  strongholds  of  the  pagan  religion,  one  of 
the  keys  of  its  position  which  Christianity  would  be 

1  Conybeare  and  Howson's  Life  of  St.  Paul,  vol  ii.  p.  79. 


56  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

likely  to  take  and  hold.  Notwithstanding  the  stim 
ulating  powers  of  nature  amid  which  they  lived,  and 
the  glorious  traditions  that  urged  them  from  behind, 
and  the  models  of  intellectual  beauty  which  charmed 
their  imaginations,  the  Asiatic  Greeks  sank  into  de- 
generacy and  decay.  An  effeminate  and  voluptuous 
race  read  of  the  heroes  that  thundered  through  the 
Iliad  without  a  spark  of  heroism  in  themselves.  Re- 
ligion itself  became  to  them,  not  a  light  which  leads 
upward  into  life,  but  which  lured  them  downward  into 
death.  It  was  made  to  throw  its  consecrating  veil 
over  the  most  brutalizing  sensuality,  and  the  sacred 
groves  concealed  abominations  which  would  bring  a 
blush  upon  the  face  of  the  open  day.  We  do  not 
know  that  the  groves  of  Mount  Prion,  like  the  groves 
of  Daphne  near  Antioch,  were  consecrated  to  lust, 
but  it  is  very  certain  that  manhood  and  womanhood 
in  the  oriental  Greek  cities  were  infected  with  the 
common  leprosy  and  sank  down  in  Asiatic  effem- 
inacy and  corruption.  The  cities  of  Ionia  were  not 
an  exception.  Their  history  illustrates  the  great 
truth  that  without  a  religion  which  brings  life  and 
health  to  the  soul,  the  most  illumined  page  of  nature 
will  grow  dark  to  it  and  the  most  brilliant  atmos- 
phere, though  drank  as  a  constant  elixir  out  of 
heaven,  will  not  save  it  from  consumption  and  death. 
It  is  certain  that  the  Gospel  was  preached  at  Eph- 
esus  by  Paul  soon  after  the  middle  of  the  first  cen- 
tury, and  that  a  church  was  gathered  there  whose 


SALXT  JOHN  AT  EFHESUS.  57 

influence  extended  rapidly  through  the  neighboring: 
country.  Its  converts  were  drawn  first  from  the 
Jewish  synagogue,  but  afterwards  and  mainly  from 
the  Greeks  and  orientals,  more  curious  to  know  and 
more  quick  to  receive  and  understand  the  truths  of 
the  new  religion,  and  doubtless  yearning  towards  the 
light  out  of  the  depths  of  their  own  degrading  su 
perstition.  At  the  end  of  three  years  even  the  mag- 
nificent temple  of  Diana  began  to  be  deserted  of  its 
worshippers,  its  long  processions  to  be  thinned  out, 
which  shows  how  deep  was  the  hunger  of  the  multi- 
tudes and  how  directly  Christianity  went  to  their 
sorest  needs. 

We  find  the  Apostle  John,  as  early  as  a.  d.  6o, 
according  to  the  New  Testament  narratives  and 
epistles,  a  colaborer  with  the  Apostles  in  or  near 
Jerusalem.  He  then  vanishes  from  history ;  but  he 
reappears  at  Ephesus  towards  the  close  of  the  cen- 
tury, where  memorials  of  unquestionable  authenticity 
fix  the  last  scenes  of  his  life.  We  cannot  mistake 
the  exigency  which  brought  him  hither.  Christian- 
ity had  broken  away  from  the  synagogue,  had  shiv- 
ered in  pieces  the  Jewish  shell  which  sought  at  first 
to  confine  it,  and  thrown  itself  on  the  vast  floating- 
waves  of  gentile  peoples  as  a  religion  for  humanity 
itself,  which  it  was  to  renovate  and  redeem.  It  had 
already  penetrated  far  beyond  the  limits  of  Ionia,  and 
its  leaven  was  fermenting  and  heaving  the  masses 
with  life.     "The  seven  chun^hes  that  are  in  Asia" 


58  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

had  arisen  and  were  flinging  their  constellated  light 
through  the  darkness.  We  knew  from  the  letter  of 
Pliny  to  Trajan,  written  soon  after  the  close  of  the 
century,  how  wide  and  deep  throughout  this  region 
the  influence  of  Christianity  had  become.  "The 
contagion  of  this  superstition,"  says  he,  "has  not 
only  seized  the  cities  but  the  villages  and  open  coun- 
try. The  temples  are  well  nigh  deserted,  the  sacred 
rites  for  a  long  time  have  been  intermitted,  and  vic- 
tims for  sacrifice  are  rarely  purchased."  But  just  in 
the  degree  that  Christianity  extended  its  influence 
would  its  native  purity  be  liable  to  be  over-clouded 
and  its  sharply  cut  lines  of  demarcation  to  become 
wavy  and  dim.  This  was  the  case  among  the  Asiatic 
Greeks,  and  especially  at  Ephesus,  the  heart  of  the 
country  whence  the  tides  of  life  were  constantly 
flowing,  and  into  which  they  constantly  returned. 
Metaphysical,  subtle,  curious,  both  analytical  and 
constructive,  and  imaginative  in  the  highest  degree, 
with  a  language  flexible  to  all  the  ranges  and  reaches 
of  thought,  the  Greek  mind  was  now  to  receive  and 
act  upon  Christianity,  and  give  it  all  its  possible 
changes  and  combinations.  Gnosticism  was  already 
at  Ephesus.  Cerinthus,  a  Hellenistic  Jew,  had  come 
from  Alexandria  and  adopted  Christianity  into  his 
all-absorbing  system  of  belief.  Judaism  had  before 
been  received  into  it.  He  made  Jesus  and  Christ 
two  persons.  Jesus  was  a  man  like  other  men,  with 
a  human  father  and  mother,  but  at  his  baptism  the 


SAINT  JOHN  AT  EPHESUS.  59 

higher  ^on,  Christ,  descended  and  entered  him  as 
the  Holy  Spirit,  but  ascended  again  and  left  him 
before  his  crucifixion.  Cerinthus  would  hear  and 
know  nothing  of  a  suffering  and  dying  Messiah,  but 
only  of  a  heavenly  one  whose  splendor  was  un- 
dimmed  and  untarnished  by  flesh  and  sense,  and 
of  whom  the  man  Jesus  was  not  an  incarnation  but 
only  the  passive  organ  and  vehicle.  This  man  was 
at  Ephesus  in  the  last  decade  of  the  first  century. 

Almost  everything  else  was  there  at  this  conflux 
of  the  Eastern  religions  and  superstitions.  The  arts 
of  magic  which  are  always  in  vogue  where  there  is 
no  enlightened  faith  in  the  supernatural,  were  prac 
ticed  by  strolling  astrologers  who  infested  every  prin- 
cipal city  from  the  Euphrates  to  the  Tiber.  They, 
too,  were  at  Ephesus,  exorcising  demons  by  charms 
and  incantations.  The  worship  of  Diana  of  the 
Ephesians  had  become  a  species  of  sorcery.  The 
silver  shrines  bearing  the  image  of  the  goddess  with 
magical  letters  —  the  famous  "  Ephesia  grammata  " 
—  were  worn  as  charms  and  amulets  by  votaries 
from  all  the  provinces  of  lesser  Asia.  Moreover,  a 
•nore  fantastic  Gnosticism  than  that  even  of  Cerin- 
'hus  had  been  imported  and  diffused  from  Syria. 
A.bhorring  the  idea  that  God  could  appear  in  this 
bad  world  directly  and  thus  stain  with  matter  his 
immaculate  purity,  it  made  God  himself  a  great  ma- 
gician who  could  bejuggle  the  senses  of  men  by  pro- 
jecting appearances  upon  them,  which  appearances, 


60  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

though  not  matter,  were  the  semblance  of  it  without 
its  substance. 

It  is  certain  that  John  was  in  Ephesus  in  the  last 
decade  of  the  century  presiding  over  the  constellated 
churches  of  that  region,  purging  them  from  corrup- 
tion and  guarding  their  purity.  It  is  certain  that  he 
here  met  Cerinthus  and  opposed  him.  The  imme- 
diate disciples  of  John  so  reported,  and  there  is  not 
the  least  reason  to  question  their  truth.  Many  anec- 
dotes are  told  of  him  ;  of  his  meeting  Cerinthus  at  a 
bath  and  fleeing  instantly  away  from  it ;  of  his  apos- 
tolic watch  and  tender  care  over  the  churches  of  Asia ; 
of  his  going  into  the  fastnesses  of  the  mountains  to 
reclaim  a  young  man  who  had  apostatized  and  joined 
a  gang  of  robbers  —  such  as  is  well-known  infested 
the  provinces  when  fleeced  by  the  Roman  proconsuls  ; 
of  his  serene  and  beautiful  old  age,  when  too  weak  to 
walk  alone  he  was  borne  into  the  assembly  and  out 
of  it  with  exhortations  to  brotherly  love  ever  upon 
his  lips  till  the  monotony  tired  them  ;  of  his  banish- 
ment to  the  island  of  Patmos  in  the  persecution 
under  Domitian,  and  his  return  thence  in  a.  d.  97  ; 
of  his  death  about  the  close  of  the  century  when 
past  the  age  of  ninety ;  of  his  burial-place  which 
Polycrates,  bishop  of  Ephesus,  towards  the  close  of 
the  second  century,  speaks  of  as  a  sacred  spot  well 
known  in  his  day  to  the  Christians  of  that  region 
who  cherished  tenderly  the  local  traditions  of  the  be- 
loved disciple.     The  anecdotes  are  strikingly  charac* 


SAINT  JOHN  AT  EPHESUS.  6 1 

teristic,  allowing  in  the  details  for  some  additions 
and  colorings,  just  such  as  a  fond  and  gossipy  tradi- 
tion would  be  likely  to  give.^ 

That  the  Apostle  was  called  to  a  post  where  Chris- 
tianity was  centralizing  its  forces  at  the  most  fearful 
crisis  of  its  history,  —  a  post  which  needed  the  per- 
sonal presence  and  commanding  authority  of  one 
who  had  not  only  seen  and  heard  the  Lord  Jesus  in 
the  days  of  his  earthly  life  but  who  held  open  con- 
verse with  Him  still ;  that  not  only  the  exigencies  of 
the  times  called  him  there,  but  the  Divine  Provi- 
dence openly  manifested  to  protect  the  nascent 
church  and  the  rising  faith,  —  is  perfectly  plain,  we 
think,  from  all  the  memorials  of  this  period  both  sa- 
cred and  profane.  It  is  convincingly  evident  when 
you  study  the  Johannean  writings  and  character  and 
regard  them  as  a  collective  force,  thrown  in  at  one  of 
the  most  perilous  conjunctures  in  human  develop- 
ment to  control  it  and  guide  it  and  hold  it  under  be- 
nign spiritual  laws.  Christianity  had  escaped  one 
danger  and  had  fallen  upon  another  vastly  more 
threatening,  and  was  in  the  breakers  already.  It 
had  broken  the  bondage  of  Judaism,  thanks  to  the 
intrepid  power  and  inspired  logic  of  Paul ;  and  the 
poor  and  vanishing  sect  of  the  Ebionites  which  the 
Church  had  fairly  thrown  off  was  the  last  fragment 
of  the  broken  chain.  It  had  cleared  the  synagogue 
completely,  and  on  the  side  of  the  Jew  the  peril  was 

1  Eusebius  H.  E.  iii.  23, 31 ;  iv.  14. 


62  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

past.  Not  so  on  the  part  of  the  Greek  whose  nimble 
intellect  and  soaring  imagination  could  put  all  the 
philosophies  and  religions  of  the  world  together  and 
fuse  them  through  every  changeable  and  gorgeous 
shape  which  could  captivate  the  fancy  of  man,  inflame 
his  passions,  or  flatter  his  pride.  Christianity,  left  to 
its  natural  course  as  a  mere  human  system  evolved 
out  of  the  common  and  seething  mass  of  opinions, 
would  not  have  brought  down  the  proud  imaginations 
and  humbled  the  philosophies  of  this  world  at  its 
feet.  It  was  in  imminent  danger  now  of  being  drawn 
up  and  absorbed  by  them  ;  of  serving  as  the  fringe  of 
a  new  Pantheism,  or  having  a  place  in  a  heathen  Pan- 
theon enlarged  and  decorated  for  its  reception.  Such 
plainly  was  the  crisis  when  John  went  to  Ephesus. 

John  lived  ''to  the  times  of  Trajan,"  says  Euse- 
bius ;  and  others  say  more  definitely  that  he  died  in 
the  third  year  of  that  emperor's  reign,  that  is,  in  the 
year  loo,  at  or  near  to  its  close.  His  death  at  least 
could  not  have  been  earlier.  This  does  not  rest  on 
any  uncertain  tradition.  We  know  it  from  other  data. 
Polycarp,  a  disciple  of  John,  who  had  drank  deeply 
of  the  same  spirit,  was  placed  by  him  over  the  neigh- 
boring church  at  Smyrna,  one  of  "  the  seven  churches 
in  Asia,"  the  light  of  whose  golden  candlesticks  the 
Apostle  watched  from  Ephesus  and  labored  to  keep 
undimmed.  There  Polycarp  lived  and  preached  ever 
after,  and  there  he  suffered  martyrdom  in  the  year 
167.     He  was  then  eighty-six  years  old,  as  he  says 


SAINT  JOHN  A  T  EPHESUS.  63 

to  his  persecutors  when  they  urged  him  to  abjure  his 
Saviour :  "  Eighty-six  years  have  I  served  Him." 
This  is  contained  in  the  letter  of  the  church  at 
Smyrna,  written  by  eye-witnesses  describing  the 
beautiful  and  triumphant  death  of  that  aged  bishop 
and  reporting  his  words. ^  This  would  give  barely 
twenty  years  of  his  life  as  falling  within  the  first  cen- 
tury. He  could  hardly  have  been  younger  than  that 
when  John  placed  him  over  the  church  at  Smyrna, 
and  it  becomes  more  probable  that  the  Apostle  lived 
past  the  century  than  that  he  died  before  its  close. 
We  know  from  Pliny's  letter  to  Trajan  already  re- 
ferred to,  written  close  upon  this  time,  that  Chris- 
tianity had  then  become  widely  diffused  in  Asia 
Minor,  and  that  the  heathen  temples  were  becoming 
deserted  of  their  worshippers. 

1  This  letter  has  some  marks  of  embellishment  from  a  later  hand, 
but  we  regard  its  facts  and  dates  as  authentic.   It  is  given  by  Eusebius. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  JOHANNEAN  WRITINGS  I    THEIR  CONGRUITV,  INTE- 
RIOR RELATIONS  AND  IDENTITY  OF  AUTHORSHIP. 

TAKING  for  our  present  purpose  the  fourth 
Gospel,  the  Catholic  Epistle,  and  the  Apoca- 
lypse, and  the  memorials  of  John  found  in  the  sy- 
noptics, a  character  rises  before  us  sketched  and 
shaded  with  marvelous  symmetry,  consistency,  and 
grace,  and  a  class  of  writings  present  themselves, 
whose  interior  relations  are  of  a  most  extraordinary 
kind.  The  character  is  such  that  no  writer  of  that 
age  would  have  created  it  as  fiction,  and  the  relations 
of  these  writings  are  not  only  impossible,  but  unim- 
aginable on  any  theory  which  does  not  make  them 
the  production  of  one  mind  and  genius. 

To  suppose  a  set  of  myth-makers  of  opposite  opin- 
ions and  tendencies,  scattered  through  half  a  century 
and  half  of  the  then  civilized  world,  to  have  left  a 
mass  of  documents,  partly  forged,  partly  compiled  from 
uncertain  tradition,  partly  made  up  of  imaginations 
taken  unconsciously  for  facts  ;  that  these  were  thrown 
hap-hazard  together,  and  that  out  of  them  emerges  a 
character  of  such  freshness  and  originality  as  that  of 
John,  of  tints  so  rich,  and  varied,  and  delicate,  and 


THE  yOHAA'NEAN  WRITINGS.  65 

yet  so  harmoniously  blended,  —  to  suppose  this  would 
be  supposing  no  less  than  a  moral  miracle.  We  are 
not  saying  that  this  character  is  unimaginable  or 
beyond  the  reach  of  creative  art  under  a  single  and 
very  skillful  hand  ;  we  are  saying  that  such  compilers 
could  no  more  have  produced  it,  and  that  by  acci- 
dent, than  a  hundred  Greek  slaves  could  build  the 
temple  of  Diana  by  throwing  down  at  random  their 
cart-loads  of  stone  and  mortar. 

The  character  of  John  is  composed  of  two  vastly 
differing  elements,  rarely  found  in  such  combination 
except  under  the  transfusing  power  of  the  Christian 
spirit,  but  found  there  in  its  perfection  and  consum- 
mation. These  two  elements  are  very  great  mascu- 
line strength,  joined  with  affections  so  overflowing 
and  tender,  that  the  strength  is  concealed  under  their 
profusion,  except  when  occasions  and  emergencies 
bring  it  to  the  test.  The  granite  is  hidden  under  the 
tendrils  that  overhang  it  with  flowers.  It  is  only  by 
assuming  that  these  two  elements  are  inconsistent 
with  each  other  that  the  critics  have  raised  their  ob- 
jections against  the  congruity  of  the  canonical  Jo- 
hannean  writings,  whereas  to  blend  them  together  is 
the  great  achievement  of  Christianity  in  human  na- 
ture, and  the  blending  is  most  perfect  when  the  dis- 
ciple leans  most  intimately  on  the  bosom  of  his  Lord. 
The  combination  does  not  impair  the  masculine  in- 
trepidity, but  preserves  it  and  tones  it,  though  con- 
cealing it  sometimes  under  the  mildest  of  womanly 
5 


60  THE  FOUHTn    GOSPEL. 

gentleness.  That  there  was  this  native  hardihood  in 
the  favorite  disciple,  intensified  even  to  savageness, 
there  are  indications  which  cannot  be  mistaken.  The 
two  sons  of  Zebedee  were  called  "  thunderers,"  and 
that  the  surname  was  descriptive  of  natural  traits,  is 
shown  by  the  fiery  zeal  which  prompted  them  to  in- 
\^oke  the  lightnings  to  blast  the  Samaritan  city  which 
refused  them  hospitality.  This,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, was  in  the  first  stages  of  discipleship,  while  as 
yet  they  understood  the  Messiah's  kingdom  to  be  one 
of  temporal  power  and  magnificence,  and  aspired  to 
its  chief  honors  and  rewards.  Not  yet  had  the  deep 
and  abundant  fountains  of  love  been  called  forth  to 
their  overflowing.  But  even  when  this  is  the  case, 
and  when  they  trickle  forth  in  all  their  tenderness, 
spreading  everywhere  the  most  delicate  verdure  and 
bloom,  we  are  never  allowed  to  forget  the  rock-ribbed 
back-ground  which  supports  the  whole.  Something 
reminds  us  even  in  the  softest  refinement  and  spirit- 
uality of  the  favorite  disciple  that  these  come  not  out 
of  weakness  and  shallowness.  When  Jesus  was  ar- 
rested in  Gethsemane,  the  disciples  dispersed  and 
fled  for  their  lives.  But  there  was  one  exception. 
We  follow  on,  and  in  the  open  court  of  the  High 
Priest's  palace  where  Jesus  is  brought  for  insult  and 
tnockery,  appears  the  youthful  John  who  had  kept 
close  to  his  Master.  Peter  follows  cautiously  at  a 
distance,  and  is  let  in  through  John's  intercession  , 
but  Peter's  courage  soon  gives  way  amid  the  appal- 


run   JOIIANA'EAN-   WRITIA'GS.  6/ 

ling  scene.  At  the  cross  again,  under  the  storm  of 
rage,  and  amid  the  scoffs  and  wagging  of  heads,  Jesus 
looks  down  and  sees  a  single  discip  e  standing  close 
by.  It  is  John  again,  —  the  same  who  drank  in  the 
divine  love  on  his  breast  with  a  tenderness  which 
was  more  than  woman's,  and  who  when  the  storm 
came  which  sifted  his  followers  like  wheat,  evinced  a 
greatness  and  strength  of  character  beyond  that  of 
common  men.  It  shows  us,  what  history  and  ex- 
perience teach  alike,  that  in  the  most  trying  emer- 
gencies, the  gentlest  natures  are  the  strongest,  pro- 
vided the  divine  gentleness  has  made  them  great. 

There  are  three  principal  documents  extant  which 
the  churches  ascribe  to  the  beloved  disciple,  —  the 
fourth  Gospel,  the  Catholic  Epistle,  and  the  Apoca- 
lypse. That  the  first  two  were  written  by  the  same 
hand,  is  shown  from  internal  evidence  which  cannot 
be  resisted.  An  imitator  or  forger  might  have  strung 
together  phrases  culled  out  of  the  fourth  Gospel  such 
as  occur  in  the  Epistle,  but  he  never  could  have  so 
made  it  live  as  to  preserve  the  spirit  that  breathes 
through  it  spontaneously  and  gives  fragrancy  to  the 
whole.  The  theology  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Logos,  is  here  set  forth,  not  only  in  the 
terms  but  with  the  unction  known  only  to  the  be- 
(oved  disciple>  But  this  is  not  all.  The  very  atmos- 
phere of  Ephesus  is  felt  in  every  chapter  of  the  Cath- 
olic Epistle.  Through  every  one  there  is  an  outlook 
apon   the   Gnostic   heresy  confronting  us  in  some 


6S  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

shape.  In  the  opening  passage  we  have  it  full  in  the 
eye,  as  if  in  the  first  stroke  of  his  pen  the  writer  was 
refuting  the  false  teacher  who  turned  the  Christ  into 
some  intangible  unreality  or  phantasm,  "  that  which 
we  have  heard,  which  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes, 
which  we  have  looked  upon,  and  our  hands  have 
I'ANDLED  of  the  Word  of  Life."  Every  sense  that 
can  testify  is  appealed  to.  Not  only  so.  We  have  it 
asserted  and  reiterated  that  "  Jesus  is  the  Christ,"  and 
he  who  denies  this  is  a  "  liar."  This  finds  its  point 
and  burden  of  meaning  when  we  have  Cerinthus 
in  full  view,  asserting  that  Jesus  was  not  the  Christ, 
but  that  He  was  one  person,  and  Christ  who  never 
came  in  the  flesh  was  quite  another  person.  By  this, 
says  the  writer  of  the  Catholic  Epistle,  ye  shall  try 
the  spirits  and  distinguish  them.  "  Every  spirit  that 
confesseth  that  Jesus  Christ  is  come  ifi  thefiesh  is  of 
God,  and  every  spirit  that  says  Jesus  Christ  is  not 
come  in  the  flesh  is  not  of  God,  and  this  is  that 
spirit  of  anti-Christ  whereof  ye  have  heard  it  should 
come,  and  even  now  already  is  in  the  world." 

That  "  sin  is  a  transgression  of  the  law,"  and  that 
"  he  that  doeth  righteousness  is  righteous,"  sound 
very  much  in  our  modern  ears,  like  saying  sin  is  sin, 
and  virtue  is  virtue.  Not  so  in  presence  of  a  heresy 
which  allowed  men  to  grovel  in  the  stye  of  sensuality, 
and  yet  promised  to  keep  their  inmost  souls  separate 
and  immaculate  before  the  Highest.  In  the  whole 
cast  and  style  of  this  Epistle  we  not  only  know  that 


THE  JOHANNEAN  WRITINGS.  69 

ihe  spirit  that  gave  form  and  coloring  to  the  fourth 
Gospel  is  with  us,  but  that  the  very  same  moral  at- 
mosphere which  lay  upon  lesser  Asia  at  the  close  of 
the  first  century,  is  all  around  us. 

But  the  comminghng  of  the  two  elements  in  the 
Catholic  Epistle  is  such  as  nature  and  not  art  must 
have  given  them.  Through  the  abounding  tender- 
ness, whose  language  is  ever  reiterated,  breaks  the 
most  severe  and  wrathful  denunciation.  Almost  in 
the  same  sentence  come  the  blessings  and  the  curses. 
The  words  "  little  children,"  which  should  rather  be 
rendered  "  my  dear  children,"  with  fond  allusions  to 
the  divine  love  and  fatherhood,  alternate  with  "  mur- 
derer," "  liar,"  and  "  anti-christ,"  and  "  children  of 
the  devil,"  applied  to  the  heretics  of  his  day.  In  the 
disciple  leaning  on  the  divine  breast  and  drinking  its 
love,  we  never  quite  lose  sight  of  the  darker  back- 
ground of  character  in  the  man  who  invoked  light- 
nings on  the  Samaritans. 

But  more  remarkably  and  unmistakably  do  we  find 
all  this  in  the  Apocalypse  brought  out  in  such  wise 
as  no  human  imagination  could  have  invented.  It  is 
no  part  of  our  work  to  expound  the  Apocalypse,  but 
we  affirm  that  its  congruity  with  the  other  Johannean 
writings  is  most  remarkable,  and  they  run  into  each 
other  by  relations  exceedingly  subtile  and  pervasive. 
This  fact  we  know  is  not  generally  acknowledged, 
but  it  will  be  obvious  to  the  reader  the  longer  he 
studies  the  contents  and  interior  relationships  of 
Vbese  writinsfs. 


yO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

The  Apocalypse  as  is  now  generally  conceded  is 
the  writing  of  John  the  Evangelist.     Doubts,  it  is 
true,  were  entertained   on  this  point   in   the   third 
century,  and  there  were  some  Greek  churches  which 
did  not  receive  it.     But  there  were  obvious  reasons 
1^'rom  the  nature  of  its  contents  it  was  not  read  Ir 
the   churches,   and    therefore   was    not   so   publicly 
known  as  the  four  Gospels.    But  it  was  early  attested 
and  commented  upon ;  and  modern  investigation  and 
criticism  render  a  verdict  in  favor  of  its  genuineness 
which    is    emphatic    and    substantially   unanimous. 
Perhaps,  however,  the  Tubingen  critics  would  not 
have  been  quite  so  swift  in  claiming  the  Apocalypse 
as  the  work  of  John,  had  not  its  contents  on  super- 
ficial examination  indicated  a  different  hand  from  the 
one  which  wrote   the   fourth    Gospel,  and   afforded 
therefore  new  ground  from  which  to  assail  the  genu- 
ineness of  the  latter.     Both,  so  we  are  told,  could  not 
be  the  productions  of  the   same   mind,    so   totally 
diverse  are  they  in  matter  and  style.     One  has  an 
artless  or  else  exceedingly  artful  simplicity  ;  the  other 
an  unwonted  gorgeousness  and  grandeur  ;  one  is  in 
comparatively  pure  Greek  ;  the  other  is  in  bad  Greek, 
and  constantly  violates  the  structural  rules  of  the 
language. 

A  comparison  of  these  two  works  reveals  some  of 
the  most  profound  and  subtile  of  psychological  phe- 
nomena, and  those  which  are  the  most  infallible  of  aV 
circumstantial  evidence.     When  we  open  the  Apoca- 


THE   JOB  ANNE  AN   WRITINGS.  7 1 

lypse,  we  are  called  upon  to  recognize  at  once  a  new 
mental  condition  and  one  professedly  abnormal.  It 
is  the  state  of  seership,  out  of  which  some  of  the  old 
prophets,  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel  for  example,  and  David 
sometimes,  prophesied  and  wrote.  It  was  produced 
from  a  state  described  by  the  author  himself  as  Iv  tticJ- 
/aart.  No  critic  who  refuses  to  take  this  into  the  ac- 
count can  say  anything  of  the  Apocalypse,  whether 
of  its  form  or  essence,  which  is  of  the  least  value 
whatever.  No  critic,  we  think,  who  does  take  this 
into  the  account  and  understand  its  bearings,  will 
rise  from  his  investigation  with  any  doubt  that  the 
same  hand  wrote  this  book  that  wrote  the  fourth 
Gospel  and  Catholic  Epistle,  and  that  the  same  per- 
sonality and  lines  of  character  which  appear  in  the 
latter  two,  are  intensified  in  the  former  to  their  sub- 
limest  consummation. 

Says  Mr.  J.  J.  Tayler  in  his  treatise  on  the  fourth 
Gospel,  "No  living  writer  has  exhibited  a  more  re- 
markable change  of  style  in  the  course  of  his  literary 
career,  than  Mr.  Carlyle ;  yet  if  we  compare  his  'Life 
of  Schiller'  with  his  'French  Revolution,'  or  his 
*  History  of  Frederick  the  Great,'  notwithstanding 
the  great  disparity  of  form,  every  reader  of  ordinary 
discernment  will  recognize  the  same  fundamental 
characteristics  of  his  peculiar  genius  in  his  earlier 
and  his  later  works."  The  same,  he  says,  is  true  of 
Milton.  "  Apply  this  standard  to  the  two  books  now 
under  consideration,  and   the  conclusion,"  he  says, 


72  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

"  will  be  irresistible,  that  if  the  Apostle  John  be  the 
author  of  the  Apocalypse,  he  cannot  have  written  the 
Gospel ;  if  he  wrote  the  Gospel,  he  cannot  be  the 
author  of  the  Apocalypse."^  He  then  goes  on  to 
prove  that  the  Apostle  John  did  write  the  Apoca- 
lypse, the  early  testimony  being  nearly  unanimous  on 
that  point,  and  therefore  he  did  not  write  the  fourth 
Gospel.  Theodore  Parker,  and  more  recently,  Pro- 
fessor Davidson,  come  to  the  same  result,  and  they 
echo  the  Tubingen  critics  generally. 

It  never  seems  to  enter  the  conception  of  any  of 
these  writers  that  there  is  any  such  condition  of  the 
human  faculties  as  seership,  or  if  it  does  that  it  is 
anything  else  than  a  normal  exercise  of  the  imagina- 
tion, as  in  the  case  of  Milton  and  Carlyle.  The  very 
stand-point  from  which  John  says  he  wrote  the  Apoc- 
alypse, and  which  determines  the  very  nature  and 
style  of  his  production,  they  ignore  altogether,  or 
have  not  the  remotest  idea  of,  and  so  their  volumes  of 
criticism  do  not  touch  the  heart  of  the  subject. 

There  are  three  modes  and  degrees  of  apprehend- 
ing truth.  It  may  be  reasoned  and  proved  argumen- 
tatively  by  strong  intellection  like  that  of  Paul ;  it 
may  be  perceived  intuitively  under  the  inspiration  of 
the  heart,  or  it  may  be  visioned  objectively  by  repre- 
sentatives and  symbols,  when  the  prophet  becomes  a 
5;eer.  The  deepest  and  clearest  intuition  is  nearest  to 
the  state  of  the  highest  seership,  and  if  John  drank 

1  Pages  13,  14. 


THE    JOHAXNKAN   WRITINGS.  73 

the  deepest  and  clearest  draughts  of  the  divine  love 
he  would  be  the  one  of  all  the  twelve  on  whom  the 
Apocalypse  would  open  its  magnificent  scenery. 

We  do  not  say  this,  believing  that  the  seership  of 
the  Apostle  was  a  natural  development  of  his  facul- 
ties, but  simply  supposing  that  the  Divine  Provi- 
dence never  acts  by  magic  ;  that  the  Spirit  does  not 
select  its  instrumentalities  arbitrarily,  but  those  best 
prepared  naturally  and  psychologically  for  its  highest 
inspirations  and  disclosures.  The  evidence  we  are 
about  to  unfold,  however,  is  all  the  same,  whatever 
view  we  take  of  the  inspiration  of  these  writings. 

When  the  mind  of  a  speaker  or  writer  passes  from 
its  normal  state  to  that  of  seership,  two  things  are  to 
be  observed.  He  speaks  thereafter  not  from  himself, 
not  according  to  his  own  tastes  and  models.  His 
will  no  longer  determines  either  his  style  or  matter, 
but  both  are  determined  by  the  uncontrolled  spon- 
taneities within  him.  Hence  the  higher  prophetic 
style  is  never  that  of  simple  narrative  or  voluntary 
utterance. 

But  neither  again  is  it  a  style  arbitrarily  induced 
upon  the  writer,  and  altogether  foreign  to  him.  Be- 
cause in  the  seer  his  subjective  state  becomes  objec- 
tive. The  truth  that  lay  in  his  mind,  or  was  bodied 
in  his  speech  in  the  form  of  metaphor,  now  passes 
cut  of  his  mind,  and  the  metaphors  become  the  living 
beings  and  the  moving  panorama  of  an  objective 
world.    Therefore,  while  the  seer  docs  not  speak  from 


74  ^-^^-^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

his  own  persor.ality  but  from  a  consciousness  deeper 
than  his  natural  one,  his  personality,  nevertheless, 
•loes  not  disappear.  Rather  it  reappears,  though 
changed  and  sublimed,  in  a  higher  order  of  mental 
and  spiritual  phenomena.  The  Spirit  that  breathes 
through  him  and  makes  him  its  organ,  takes  the 
things  of  his  memory  and  the  whole  treasury  of  his 
imagination  and  experience,  and  recombines  them 
with  the  figures  of  its  own  more  vast  and  illuminated 
perspectives.  Consequently,  the  idiosyncrasies,  men- 
tal, moral,  and  spiritual,  the  characteristics  of  the 
individual  in  his  normal  condition,  are  to  be  traced 
always  in  the  seer,  though  heightened  and  intensified. 
Ezekiel  is  not  Isaiah,  and  these  prophets  never 
retain  their  simple  narrative  style  when  they  rise 
into  the  heights  of  seership,  though  their  character- 
istics are  sublimed  without  being  lost.  David  passed 
the  years  of  his  youth  tending  his  father's  flocks  on 
the  plains  of  Bethlehem,  and  so  afterwards  in  his 
highest  moments  of  inspiration  his  figures  of  speech 
are  drawn  from  a  shepherd's  life  and  from  pastoral 
fields.  If  his  inspiration  had  become  vision,  un- 
questionably his  figures  of  speech  would  have  taken 
form  and  coloring,  and  unrolled  to  his  eye  an  objec- 
tive world  showing  in  mystic  light  "  the  green  pas- 
tures "  and  "  the  still  waters." 

Now  let  any  one  compare  the  fourth  Gospel  with 
the  Apocalypse,  and  he  will  be  surprised  to  find  how 
';on«tantly  the  metaphors  of  the  former  pass  into  the 


THE  JOHANNEAN  WRITINGS,  y$ 

latter  and  become  the  living  figures  of  its  ever  shift- 
ing panorama.  This  is  the  more  remarkable  as  these 
figures  of  speech  are  altogether  peculiar  and  strictly 
Johannean.  The  fact  is  illustrative  of  a  profound 
psychological  principle,  but  it  is  a  principle  which  no 
fabricator  of  that  age  would  ever  have  dreamed  of 
availing  himself  of.  We  will  give  some  very  striking 
examples. 

The  first  chapter  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  in  that  por- 
tion of  it  which  opens  the  personal  biography  of 
Jesus,  describes  a  scene  which  evidently  glowed  viv- 
idly afterwards  in  the  imagination  of  the  Evangelist. 
The  Baptist,  seeing  Jesus  coming,  waves  his  hand, 
and  says  to  his  disciples,  "  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God 
that  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world."  The  mind 
of  John  dwelt  fondly  upon  the  image,  for  the  same  is 
repeated  soon  after  and  graphically  described.  The 
next  day  the  Baptist  stood,  and  two  of  his  disciples, 
one  of  whom  was  evidently  the  Evangelist  himself. 
Looking  on  Jesus  as  He  walked,  he  saith,  "  Behold 
the  Lamb  of  God."  By  none  other  of  the  Evangel- 
ists is  Jesus  ever  called  the  Lamb,  and  with  a  single 
exception  the  figure  is  used  by  no  other  writer  of  the 
New  Testament.  It  occurs  in  i  Peter  i.  19.  But  at 
the  beginning  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  it  evidently  de- 
scribes Jesus  as  the  coming  sacrifice,  and  implies  as 
well  a  certain  grace  of  person  and  charm  of  manner 
which  had  won  at  first  sight  the  heart  of  John. 

A  lamb  offered  in  sacrifice  is  a  beautiful  figure  of 


76  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

self-oblation,  but  not  likely  to  be  selected  by  any 
writer  under  ordinary  conditions,  as  the  symbol  of 
regal  power  and  authority.  But  we  open  the  Apoca- 
lypse, and  lo !  the  image  of  the  Lamb  reappears,  not 
now  as  a  figure  of  speech,  but  in  living  objective 
form,  and  around  it  all  the  figures  of  the  moving 
panorama  are  grouped  in  their  rank  and  order.  And 
when  the  ritual  of  heaven  is  described,  and  we  look 
up  through  "the  ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand 
and  thousands  of  thousands,"  and  the  angels  about 
the  throne,  and  the  four-and-twenty  elders  that  cast 
down  before  it  their  crowns  of  gold,  and  the  eye  at 
last  sees  the  central  figure  of  this  ascending  homage, 
it  is  not  an  oriental  monarch  sitting  in  regal  splendor, 

but  A  LAMB   AS   IT   HAD   BEEN   SLAIN.       The  figure  OC- 

curs  more  than  twenty  times  in  the  Apocalypse,  but 
now  always  hypostatized.  The  figure  stands  con- 
spicuous at  the  opening  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  and 
tones  it  throughout ;  the  figure  hypostatized  deter- 
mines the  whole  drama  of  the  Apocalypse,  and  draws 
around  it  the  heavenly  alleluiahs. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Logos,  or  Word,  is  not  peculiar 
\o  the  Johannean  writings,  but  its  form  of  statement  is. 

Nowhere  else  in  the  New  Testament  except  the 
Johannean  writings,  nor  indeed  in  any  writing  of  the 
first  century  is  Jesus  Christ  called  the  Logos.  In  the 
proem  of  the  fourth  Gospel  the  Logos  is  distinctly 
personified,  and  in  such  wise  that  it  has  baffled 
the  commentators  ever  since ;  and  in  the  very  first 


THE  JOIIANNEAN  WRITINGS.  7/ 

verse  of  the  Catholic  Epistle  it  is  personified  again 
in  like  manner.  It  ceases  to  be  an  abstract  term,  and 
is  something  which  men  have  "seen"  and  "handled." 
This  is  specially  and  emphatically  Johannean,  and, 
as  we  shall  see  by  and  by,  was  designed  to  turn 
the  divine  truth  with  its  boldest  and  brightest  front 
against  the  Gnostic  heresies. 

We  should  naturally  expect  that  the  Logos  would 
reappear  in  the  Apocalypse.  It  does  ;  and  it  is  not 
only  hypostatized,  but  dramatized,  and  goes  forth  as 
a  fierce  warrior  and  an  almighty  King,  armed  against 
the  enemies  of  truth,  and  riding  them  down  with 
garments  crimsoned  with  their  blood. 

"  I  saw  heaven  opened,  and  behold  a  white  horse  ; 
and  he  that  sat  upon  him  was  called  Faithful  and 
True,  and  in  righteousness  he  doth  judge  and  make 
war.  His  eyes  were  as  a  flame  of  fire,  and  on  his 
head  were  many  crowns  ;  and  he  had  a  name  written 
that  no  man  knew,  but  he  himself  And  he  was 
clothed  in  a  vesture  bathed  in  blood :  and  his 
name  is  called  the  Logos  of  God.  And  the  armies 
in  heaven  followed  him  upon  white  horses,  clothed 
in  fine  linen,  white  and  clean.  And  out  of  his  mouth 
goeth  a  sharp  sword,  that  with  it  he  should  smite  the 
nations  ;  and  he  shall  rule  them  with  a  rod  of  iron : 
and  he  treadeth  the  wine-press  of  the  fierceness  and 
wrath  of  Almighty  God.  And  he  had  on  his  vesture 
and  on  his  thigh  a  name  written.  King  of  kings,  and 
Lord  of  lords."  ^ 

1  Ret.  xix.  ii-i6. 


78  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

It  is  alleged  by  some  of  the  critics  that  the  Logos 
doctrine  was  borrowed  from  the  later  Platonists,  and 
that  it  fixes  the  date  of  the  fourth  Gospel  towards 
the  middle  of  the  second  century.  Here  in  a  work 
acknowledged  to  be  John's  by  these  same  critics,  the 
Word  is  not  only  hypostatized  already,  but  clothed 
with  Divine  attributes  like  the  Word  of  the  Golden 
Proem. 

Our  next  illustration  is  of  even  more  remarkable 
significance.  The  opening  chapters,  both  of  the 
fourth  Gospel  and  of  the  Catholic  Epistle,  describe 
the  Word  as  the  Beginning  and  the  Ultimation  ;  as 
existing  h>  ap^ii,  —  in  the  prime  central  principles  of 
Divine  being  ;  and  again  as  the  Word  made  flesh  — 
fxapt  iycvcTo, — as  existing  in  the  lowest  and  outermost 
things.  In  the  Catholic  Epistle  it  is,  "  That  which 
was  m  the  Beginning!'  and,  "  That  which  our  eyes 
have  seen  and  our  hands  have  handled!'  This  goes 
to  the  profoundest  metaphysics  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Moreover  it  is  in  a  form  exclusively  and 
intensely  Johannean.  The  thought  may  be  gathered 
and  deduced  elsewhere,  but  it  never  runs  into  this 
peculiar  mould.  But  open  the  Apocalypse,  and  this 
profound  metaphysic  becomes  the  grandest  objective 
reality,  rising  on  the  sight  in  glorified  form  and  with 
overwhelming  power  and  effulgence.  The  Beginning 
and  the  Ultimation,  the  Alpha  and  the  Omega,  ap- 
pears as  one  like  unto  the  Son  of  man,  his  counte- 
nance as  the  sun  shining  in  his  strength,  his  hairs  as 


rilE  JOHANNEAN   WRITIAT.S.  79 

white  as  wool,  and  his  feet  like  brass  refined  and 
burning,  —  that  is.  He  is  divine  not  only  Iv  apxfj  — 
in  first  things,  but  in  their  lowest  natural  forms  and 
ultimations.  The  conception  was  not  only  above  the 
age,  but  above  all  the  ages.  Its  formulation,  as  found 
in  the  Johannean  writings,  is  not  only  original  and 
peculiar,  but  it  transcends  the  profoundest  deep  of 
Greek  metaphysics  and  the  loftiest  flights  of  poetry. 
Another  figure  which  has  become  common  cur- 
rency in  the  speech  of  Christendom,  but  which  is 
altogether  Johannean  in  origin,  is  that  of  water  not 
used  as  the  symbol  of  baptism,  but  as  representing 
the  power  of  truth  to  refresh  the  soul  and  slake  its 
thirst ;  and  of  bread  to  satisfy  its  hunger  ;  making 
Jesus  Christ,  by  a  bold  metaphor,  both  water  and 
bread  from  heaven.  There  is  nothing  of  this  in  the 
synoptics,  but  it  characterizes  the  fourth  Gospel 
throughout.  The  imagery  clung  delightfully  to  the 
mind  of  the  beloved  disciple,  and  those  discourses  and 
conversations  of  Jesus  in  which  it  abounds  are  fondly 
remembered  and  reproduced  in  all  their  tenderness. 
In  the  conversation  with  the  Samaritan  woman,  the 
Christ  is  "  living  water,"  or,  again,  a  fountain  of 
water  in  the  believer  bubbling  up  unto  everlasting 
life,  —  that  is  perpetually,  and  diffusing  verdure  and 
bloom  over  all  the  scenery  of  the  soul.  He  offers 
Himself  as  food  and  drink,  and  so  merges  the  literal 
sense  in  the  spiritual,  that  some  of  his  followers  mis- 
understand Him  and  go  away.    "Who  can  hear  such 


8o  THE  FOURTH  GOSPJiL. 

sayings  ? "  And  in  the  last  jubilant  day  of  the 
Feast  of  the  Tabernacles,  when  the  long  winding 
procession  brought  water  from  the  springs  of  Siloam, 
circling  the  altar  and  pouring  it  out  as  they  chanted, 
"  Behold,  we  draw  water  from  the  wells  of  salvation," 
a  loud  voice  startles  the  crowd  and  commands  them. 
Evidently  there  was  a  prophet-tone  in  the  words  that 
broke  in  upon  the  ceremony  and  arrested  it.  Jesus 
**  stood  and  cried,"  "  If  any  man  thirst  let  him  come 
unto  me  and  drink.  He  that  believeth  on  me  out  of 
his  heart  shall  flow  rivers  of  living  water." 

Turn  to  the  Apocalypse,  and  what  before  was  bold 
metaphor  and  graphic  description  passes  into  the 
objective  scenery  of  the  seer.  It  is  no  longer  in  the 
mind,  but  visioned  as  out  of  the  mind  ;  unrolled  as 
the  land  of  Paradise  through  which  crystal  streams 
are  flowing,  between  rows  of  trees,  margined  with 
eternal  green.  The  streams  flow  out  of  "  the  throne 
of  God  and  of  the  Lamb,"  along  the  streets  of  the 
New  Jerusalem,  and  on  either  side  are  rows  of  the 
tree  of  life.  The  figure  often  recurs,  but  now  as 
actual  water  visioned  and  flowing  clear  as  in  the  last 
fervent  invitation,  "  Let  him  that  is  athirst  come, 
and  whosoever  will  let  him  take  the  water  of  life 
freely,"  reiterating  the  very  invitation  of  Christ  in 
the  Gospel,  "  If  any  man  thirst  let  him  come  unto 
me  and  drink."  The  whole  is  intensely  Johannean, 
and  could  no  more  have  been  fabricated  by  some 
writer  of  the  next  century  than  Lear's  jester  could 


THE  JOIIANNEAN  WRITINGS.  8 1 

have  fabricated  a  second  Iliad.  It  is  beyond  the 
range  of  poetic  imagination,  and  beyond  Homer 
himself. 

The  Good  Shepherd,  and  the  flock  as  the  sheep 
of  his  pasture,  have  been  the  favorite  imagery  under 
which  the  Church  in  all  ages  has  delighted  to  repre- 
sent the  relation  of  Jesus  Christ  to  his  followers. 
But  whence  is  this  imagery  derived  }  Not  from  the 
twenty-third  Psalm,  though  it  occurs  there,  David 
himself  having  been  called  from  pastoral  life.  The 
Church  derives  it  from  discourses  of  Jesus  reported 
in  the  fourth  Gospel,  and  which  are  not  found  in 
the  synoptics,  not  merely  because  they  were  most 
congenial  with  the  Johannean  spirit,  but  because 
John  only  of  the  evangelists  was  an  ear-witness  of 
their  utterance.  The  parable  of  the  good  shepherd 
was  not  one  of  the  public  proclamations  of  his  minis- 
try in  Galilee ;  it  was  uttered  in  the  more  private 
colloquial  intercourse  which  he  had  with  the  people 
that  gathered  around  him  in  and  about  Jerusalem, 
whither  He  had  gone  up  to  attend  one  of  the  festivals. 
The  Jews  were  watching  Him,  and  seeking  cause  for 
arresting  Him.  "My  sheep,"  said  He,  "hear  my 
voice,  and  I  know  them,  and  they  follow  me.  I  am 
the  good  Shepherd,  and  know  my  sheep,  and  am 
known  of  mine."  And  at  the  next  festival  He  repeats 
what  He  had  said  before :  "  Ye  believe  not  because 
ye  are  not  of  my  sheep,  as  I  said  unto  you.  My 
sheep  hear  my  voice,  and  1  know  them,  and  they  fol- 


82  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

low  me.  And  I  give  unto  them  eternal  life,  and  they 
shall  never  perish,  neither  shall  any  pluck  them  out 
of  m}^  hand."  And  again,  as  the  door  or  gate  of  the 
field,  he  says,  "  If  any  man  enter  in  he  shall  be  saved, 
and  shall  go  in  and  out,  and  find  pasture." 

The  appendix  to  the  fourth  Gospel  —  for  such  we 
regard  the  closing  chapter  —  was  probably  added  by 
John's  personal  disciples  from  traditions  of  his  dis- 
courses preserved  at  Ephesus.  In  it  the  same  imag- 
ery occurs  again  with  the  injunction  of  the  Master, 
"  Feed  my  sheep,  feed  my  lambs." 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  why  this  imagery  passed  thus 
fully  and  spontaneously  into  the  discourse  of  our 
Saviour.  He  was  brought  up  at  Nazareth  ;  and  the 
vast  plain  of  Esdraelon,  with  its  brooks  murmuring 
towards  the  sea,  dotted  over  with  flocks  of  sheep,  the 
shepherds  going  before  them,  calling  the  leaders  by 
name,  carrying  the  lambs  in  their  arms,  conducting 
them  to  green  spots  by  the  brook-side,  dr  into  the 
sheep-fold  by  night,  and  into  the  cool  shade  at  sultry 
noon,  must  have  been  the  most  familiar  scenes  which 
Jesus  looked  upon  through  his  youth  and  opening 
manhood.  They  arrest  the  notice  of  the  traveller 
to-day,  and  bring  the  peaceful  imagery  of  the  fourth 
Gospel  freshly  to  his  mind. 

It  would  be  very  strange  if  we  did  not  find  it  re- 
produced in  the  visions  of  the  New  Jerusalem.  It  is 
there  ;  the  vales  of  Esdraelon  idealized  and  glowing  in 
mystic  light  become  the  fields  into  which  the  Chris? 


THE  JOHANNEAN  WRITINGS.  83 

as  the  Shepherd  of  the  fold  shall  lead  his  flock  washed 
in  his  blood  and  made  white  and  clean.  "  They  shall 
hunger  no  more,  neither  thirst  any  more,  neither 
shall  the  sun  light  on  them  nor  any  heat ;  for  the 
Lamb  which  is  in  the  midst  of  the  throne  shall  feed 
them,  and  shall  lead  them  unto  living  fountains  of 
waters,  and  God  shall  wipe  away  all  tears  from  theii 
eyes." 

Light,  as  the  symbol  and  representative  of  truth, 
is  a  figure  of  speech  found  in  almost  all  classes  of 
writing,  but  it  is  found  in  the  fourth  Gospel  as  no- 
where else.  Jesus  Christ  is  there  presented,  not 
;nerely  as  a  teacher  to  enlighten  the  minds  of  men 
with  his  doctrine,  but  He  becomes  the  impersonation 
of  Light  itself,  and  the  very  sun  of  the  moral  uni- 
verse. This  mode  of  speech  characterizes  the  entire 
fourth  Gospel  to  such  an  extent  that  it  has  seemed  to 
many  to  give  it  a  Zoroastrian  tinge,  and  it  is  difficult 
to  avoid  the  inference  that  it  has  not  some  tacit  ref- 
erence to  the  Gnosticism  of  that  day.  The  Baptist 
is  a  light  local  and  temporary,  but  the  Logos  which 
was  in  the  beginning  with  God,  and  was  God,  comes 
into  the  world  as  The  Light  to  enlighten  every  man, 
and  John  and  all  other  lights  pale  before  it.  The 
figure  used  in  this  way  occurs  nowhere  in  the  synop- 
tics, and  nowhere  in  the  Epistles,  except  in  the  first 
Epistle  of  John,  where  God  Himself  is  "  Light  in 
whom  is  no  darkness  at  all."  ^     In  one  of  the  most 

1  I  John  i.  5. 


84  Tim  FOURTH  GOSFEL. 

Striking  passages  of  the  fourth  Gospel  the  personifi- 
cation is  employed  early  in  the  morning  as  Jesus  was 
teaching  in  the  temple.  At  the  hour  when  the  sun 
was  just  rising  and  flinging  his  beams  aslant  the 
gilded  dome  and  roof,  and  the  white  marble  columns 
possibly  suggesting  the  figure,  Jesus  declares,  "  I  am 
THE  Light  of  the  world."  ^ 

We  open  the  Apocalypse,  and  in  the  very  first 
chapter  we  find  that  the  figure  of  the  Proem  is  hypos- 
tatized  as  the  sun  itself  of  the  higher  mystic  world. 
The  Logos  which  came  before  as  The  Light  to  en- 
lighten every  one,  appears  now  as  one  like  unto  the 
Son  of  man,  his  countenance  as  the  sun  shining  in 
his  strength,  standing  in  the  midst  of  the  constel- 
lated churches,  which  like  golden  candlesticks,  bor- 
row their  light  and  trick  their  beams  from  Him. 
The  figure  recurs  again  and  again,  but  it  is  no  longer 
metaphor.  It  becomes  the  central  luminary  itself, 
diffusing  warmth  and  glory  throughout  the  New 
Jerusalem,  which  needs  no  candle,  no  sun,  and  no 
moon,  because  "  the  Lamb  is  the  Light  thereof." 

We  cite  one  more  instance  of  a  most  remarkable 
kind.  John  alone  of  all  the  twelve  followed  Jesus  to 
the  cross  and  stood  under  it  to  witness  its  agonies. 
Therefore  he  gives  details  which  all  the  others  omit. 
None  of  the  synoptics  mention  the  piercing  with  the 
spear,  but  John  does  it  with  asseverations  which 
show  how  deeply  the  sight  affected  him. 

1  John  viii.  I2.  ^  Rev.  i.  13-16  ;  xxii.  5. 


THE  yo  I/A  AWE  AN  WRITINGS.  85 

'*  One  of  the  soldiers  with  a  spear  pierced  His 
side,  and  forthwith  came  thereout  blood  and  water ; 
and  he  that  saw  it  bare  record,  and  his  record  is 
true ;  and  he  knoweth  that  he  saith  true  ;  that  yc 
might  believe,"  —  evidently  referring  to  the  doceti- 
cism  of  the  Gnostics,  who  denied  the  real  suffering 
of  the  Christ.  And  then  follows  the  citation  of  the 
prophesy,  "  They  shall  look  on  Him  whom  they 
pierced."  ^ 

This  quotation  is  from  Zech.  xii.  10,  and  the  lan- 
guage, as  there  applied,  has  no  direct  reference  to 
Christ,  but  to  the  enemies  of  Jerusalem  in  her  con- 
flict with  the  heathen  nations.  John  applies  it  in  a 
secondary  and  mystical  sense  to  the  men  who  cruci- 
fied the  Lord. 

In  the  reappearings  of  Jesus,  in  two  successive 
scenes,  John  alone  remembers  what  had  so  vividly 
impressed  his  senses,  and  through  them  his  imagina- 
tion at  the  cross.  "Jesus  showed  them  his  hands 
and  his  side." 

Turn  now  to  the  Apocalypse,  and  the  same  thing 
reappears  in  the  vision  of  the  seer,  sublimed  and 
intensified.  The  fact,  of  which  John  alone  of  the 
twelve  was  the  eye-witness,  is  recalled.  Not  only  so, 
but  the  same  passage  from  Zechariah  is  cited  in  the 
same  secondary  and  mystical  sense,  and  the  imagery 
and  language  of  the  passage  are  employed  with 
greater  fullness  and  amplitude.  "Behold  He  com- 
1  Johtt  xix.  34-37. 


86  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

eth  with  clouds  and  every  eye  shall  see  Him,  and 
they  also  which  pierced  Him,  and  all  kindreds  of  the 
earth  shall  wail  because  of  Him.  Even  so,  Amen." 
Both  quotations  from  the  same  prophecy,  made  with 
such  peculiarity,  point  indubitably  to  one  and  the 
same  writer.^  The  fact  which  had  impressed  the 
senses  of  John  so  deeply  and  tragically,  passes  into 
the  imagery  of  the  seer,  where  that  same  Christ 
coming  to  judgment  shall  compel  those  who  pierced 
his  side  to  look  upon  Him  in  his  open  and  over- 
whelming majesty.  Dr.  Davidson  tries  to  parry  the 
force  of  this  point  in  a  course  of  remark  whose  per- 
tinence we  are  unable  to  see. 

The  personal  characteristics  of  the  favorite  dis- 
ciple are  portrayed  not  less  in  the  Apocalypse  than 
in  the  other  Johannean  writings.  Both  the  prime 
elements  of  his  character  are  strongly  contrasted,  but 
exalted  and  toned  beyond  the  power  of  any  human 
imagination  to  commingle  and  harmonize.  No 
chambers  of  imagery  ever  opened  such  treasures 
of  wrath,  such  storm-clouds,  forking  lightnings,  or 
showering  down  fire  and  hail  and  bloody  rain.  The 
destruction,  not  of  a  Samaritan  city,  but  of  all  the 
enemies  of  Christianity,  both  Jewish  and  Roman,  is 
seen  through  the  opening  ages,  and  the  New  Jeru- 

1  The  text  is  rendered  in  the  Septuagint,  —  /col  iiri^X^y^nvTai  vpot 
fit  o»'0'  &v  Karapx-hcavTo,  —  "  they  shall  look  on  me  whom  they  have 
mocked."  In  both  cases,  in  the  quotation  in  the  fourth  Gospel  and 
in  the  Apocalypse,  the  original  is  changed  from  the  first  person  to  the 
third. 


THE  JOIFAXNEAN  WRITINGS.  8/ 

salem  descending  beyond  adorned  and  beloved  as  a 
bride.  The  grand  and  terrific  heightened  to  super- 
human intensity,  set  off  in  contrast  with  images  of 
peace  more  sweet  and  lovely  than  the  earth  alone 
car.  furnish,  all  are  there.  But  the  critics  mistake, 
we  think,  when  they  suppose  the  personal  feelings 
and  passions  of  the  writer  are  in  the  Apocalypse. 
In  the  seer  they  have  passed  beyond  that  stage  alto- 
gether. His  personal  genius  is  there  superhumanly 
exalted  and  idealized,  for  he  speaks  not  himself  but 
is  spoken  out  of;  and  the  divine  pencil  takes  its  col- 
orings from  a  human  treasure-house,  where  they  had 
been  abundantly  stored  up,  and  paints  the  realities 
which  w^ere  to  be,  and  whose  future  the  course  of 
Christian  history  has  ever  since  been  filling  up. 

The  style  of  the  Johannean  writings,  —  a  subject 
on  which  the  critics  have  grievously  stumbled,  —  is 
exceedingly  variant.  But  it  varies  as  the  psychologi- 
cal condition  of  the  historian  differs  from  that  of  the 
seer.  One  writes  from  his  own  natural  conscious- 
ness. The  other  writes  from  a  profounder  conscious- 
ness than  the  natural  one,  and  the  style  is  not  his 
own,  though  colored  by  his  native  genius.  One  may 
be  perfectly  simple  and  prosaic  ;  the  other,  when  es- 
sentially prophetic,  is  raised  to  a  sphere  of  thought 
where  the  wing  of  imagination  never  dares  to  play, 
and  his  style  may  assume  a  mystic  grandeur  beyond 
that  of  ordinary  poetry. 

But  we  come  to  another  peculiarity  of  the  Apoca- 


88  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

lypse,  and  one  v/hich  seems  at  first  to  distinguish  it 
strongly  firom  the  other  Johannean  writings,  we  mean 
the  "  bad  Greek,"  which  the  critics  have  made  so 
much  account  of.  This,  too,  when  narrowly  scruti- 
nized, remands  us  to  one  of  the  profounder  principles 
of  mental  action. 

When  men  pass  from  a  normal  to  a  trance  con- 
dition, or  one  essentially  abnormal,  and  speak  from 
pure  spontaneity,  they  almost  always  speak  in  their 
vernacular  tongue,  seldom  in  a  language  which  has 
been  acquired  later.  If  a  German  who  had  acquired 
English  should  somnambulize,  he  would  inevitably 
fall  back  upon  the  speech  which  he  learned  from  his 
mother's  lips,  and  to  which  his  organs  and  his  inte- 
rior thought  had  always  been  attuned.  The  reason 
is  plain.  In  these  abnormal  moods  the  voluntary 
powers  are  in  abeyance,  and  the  involuntary  are  in 
full  play,  and  will  determine  to  no  speech  which  is 
foreign  to  them  and  artificial,  but  only  to  their  own 
native  forms  and  idioms.^ 

It  is  a  very  remarkable  fact  that  the  bad  Greek  of 
the  Apocalypse  is  Greek  which  has  been  Hebraized. 
It  is  full  of  Hebrew  idioms,  which  have  led  the  critics 
strongly  to  suspect  that  it  was  composed  originally 
in  Hebrew.     Bishop  Middleton  says  that  if  this  could 

1  Dr.  Rush,  of  Philadelphia,  who  practiced  among  the  German 
population,  said  that  people  who  had  not  spoken  their  native  tongue 
for  thirty  years,  on  their  death-beds,  with  the  eternal  scene  drawing 
nigh,  would  talk  and  pray  in  the  language  of  their  childhood. 


THE  yOIIAAiVEAN  WRITINGS.  89 

be  admitted  all  the  difficulties  on  this  score  would 
vanish  at  once. 

It  may  not  only  be  admitted,  but  assumed  as  ex- 
ceedingly probable,  that  the  Apocalypse,  if  written 
by  John  Iv  Tri/eu/xart,  was  produced  in  one  of  the  He- 
brew dialects.  The  Syro-Chaldee  was  his  vernacu- 
lar, the  same  which  he  spoke  on  the  shores  of  the 
Galilean  lake,  and  associated  with  which  all  the 
memories  of  his  childhood,  youth,  and  early  man- 
hood, and  the  natural  imagery  which  enshrined  them, 
were  stored  away  in  the  treasuries  of  his  mind.  All 
his  intercourse  with  Jesus  had  been  in  this  language, 
and  all  the  discourses  he  had  ever  heard  from  Him 
were  in  the  same  dialect.  It  would  be  strange  indeed 
if  after  the  ascension  of  Jesus,  when  intercourse  with 
the  beloved  disciple  was  renewed,  it  had  been  in  a 
foreign  language,  and  not  in  the  one  which  they  used 
together  when  he  leaned  on  the  Master's  bosom. 
Inevitably,  and  by  psychological  laws,  when  he  wrote 
kv  TTvevfjiaTL,  that  is,  not  by  his  own  will,  but  out  of  a 
profounder  spontaneity  and  under  the  dictation  of 
the  very  lips  that  charmed  his  younger  manhood,  the 
Divine  Spirit  would  not  flow  into  Greek  forms,  but 
mto  the  forms  of  his  native  tongue. 

The  congruity  of  the  Johannean  writings  with  each 
other  and  with  the  character  of  the  favorite  disciple, 
is  important  not  merely  as  a  most  decisive  argument 
for  the  genuineness  of  these  writings,  but  as  helping 


QO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

greatly  in  their  mutual  interpretation  and  in  that  of 
the  whole  New  Testament.  For  it  cannot  well  be 
denied  that  the  Johannean  theology  is  inmost  like 
the  soul  in  the  body,  being  the  central  light  which 
penetrates,  involves,  and  transfigures  the  whole. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE   SCOPE,    PURPOSE,   AND    SPIRIT    OF    THE    APOCA* 

LYPSE. 

T  T  7E  reserve  for  a  separate  chapter  a  difficulty 
•  ^  raised  by  modern  criticism  pertaining  to  the 
congruity  and  identity  of  authorship  of  the  Apoca- 
lypse and  the  fourth  Gospel.  It  is  this  :  The  temper 
of  the  one  is  wholly  unlike  that  of  the  other.  The 
temper  of  the  fourth  Gospel  is  sweet  and  beautifully 
Christian ;  the  temper  of  the  Apocalypse  is  fierce, 
vindictive,  and  Jewish.  Baur  sees  in  the  Apocalypse 
abundant  evidence  for  his  theory  of  two  hostile  par- 
ties in  the  primitive  Church,  —  the  Jewish  party,  at 
the  head  of  which  was  Peter  ;  the  Gentile  party, 
at  the  head  of  which  was  Paul ;  and  of  course  John 
wrote  in  the  interest  of  the  Jewish  party,  recognizing 
throughout  the  Apocalypse  only  twelve  Apostles, 
ignoring  the  thirteenth,  telling  the  churches  that 
Paul  claimed  to  be  an  Apostle  when  he  was  not, 
and  was  a  "liar"  (Rev.  ii.  2).  We  enter  not  into  any 
examination  of  Baur's  theory,  which  a  late  writer  we 
think  has  put  forever  at  rest,^  but  the  purpose  and 
^emper  of  a  writing,  which  comes  to  us  from  the  man 

1  Fisher's  Essays  on  the  Origin  of  Christianity^  specially  Essay  IV. 


92  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

who  shared  most  fully  the  confidence  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  becomes  to  us  a  subject  of  the  deepest 
interest. 

At  what  time  was  it  written  ?  is  a  question  of  some 
importance,  and  bears  incidentally  on  its  interpreta- 
tion. On  this  point  the  traditions  of  the  primitive 
Church  are  all  in  one  direction  :  the  Church,  that 
is,  of  the  century  succeeding  the  apostolic  age  ;  tra- 
ditions so  early  that  they  almost  become  the  testi- 
mony of  ear-witnesses.  It  was  written,  according  to 
the  earliest  testimony,  during  the  reign  of  Domitian, 
or  about  a.  d.  96.  Irenaeus,  a  contemporary  of 
John's  disciples,  says  the  Revelation  "  was  seen  not 
long  ago,  almost  in  our  age,  at  the  end  of  the  reign 
of  Domitian."  MeUto,  bishop  of  Sardis,  one  of  the 
churches  to  whom  the  Apocalypse  was  originally  ad- 
dressed, writes  as  early  as  a.  d.  177,  and  receives 
the  Apocalypse  as  that  of  John  ;  and  Justin,  writing 
in  140,  and  at  the  city  of  Ephesus,  the  scene  of 
John's  last  labors,  and  when  hundreds  were  alive 
who  had  seen  and  heard  him,  refers  to  the  book,  and 
quotes  it.  Tertullian,  about  A.  d.  200,  says,  "  We 
have  churches  which  are  disciples  of  John ; "  and  re- 
ferring to  the  Apocalypse, "  The  succession  of  bishops 
traced  to  the  original  will  assure  us  that  John  is  the 
author."  Clement's  testimony  is  to  the  same  purpose. 
The  churches  which  had  the  best  means  of  knowing, 
not  only  testify  unanimously  to  the  Johannean  au- 
thorship of  the  Apocalypse,  but  also  to  its  date  ;  and 


SCOPE,   ETC.,    OF  THE  APOCALYPSE.  93 

the  testimony  begins  so  early  that  it  is  virtually  that 
of  men  who  had  seen  the  beloved  disciple,  hung  upon 
hie  lips,  welcomed  him  home  from  his  banishment  in 
Patmos,  and  saw  him  laid  in  his  final  rest  at  Ephesus. 
It  is  concurrent  to  the  same  result.  —  John's  banish- 
ment was  in  the  persecutions  under  Domitian,  at 
which  time  he  had  his  visions ;  that  is,  about  a.  d. 
96,  the  last  of  that  tyrant's  reign. 

Why  have  subsequent  criticisms,  some  of  therr. 
ancient  but  most  of  them  modern,  endeavored  to  set 
aside  this  early  testimony }  Almost  solely  for  the 
reason  that  the  eleventh  chapter  of  the  Apocalypse 
is  supposed  to  refer  to  Jerusalem  and  the  temple  as 
if  they  were  yet  standing.  Jerusalem  was  destroyed 
A.  D.  70.  Therefore  —  such  is  the  logic,  —  the  book 
must  have  been  written  before  that  time.  The  ban- 
ishment to  Patmos  must  have  been  during  the  perse- 
cutions of  Nero,  or  about  a.  d.  66. 

We  shall  see  that  the  supposed  reference  to  Jerusa- 
lem and  the  temple  is  an  argument  which  has  not  the 
least  validity.  Aside  from  this,  it  is  to  be  observed 
that  the  persecution  under  Nero  was  local,  and  there  is 
no  historical  evidence  that  it  extended  to  Asia  Minor. 
Then  there  is  no  probability  that  John  was  at  Ephe- 
sus so  early  as  66,  or  that  the  seven  churches,  with 
the  exception  of  the  church  at  Ephesus,  had  even  an 
existence.  Paul  preached  at  Ephesus  a.  d.  55,  and 
gathered  a  church  there.  About  three  years  after  (^  8), 
on  his  return  to  Jerusalem  from  Corinth,  he  meets  at 


94  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Miletus  the  elders  from  Ephesus,  when  occurred  that 
scene  of  tenderest  pathos  which  Luke  has  described. 
In  the  year  62  Paul  writes  his  letter  to  the  Ephesians 
from  Rome.  In  the  year  6^  he  is  at  Ephesus  again, 
and  writes  thence  his  letter  to  Titus.  In  the  year  GK 
he  is  in  prison  again  at  Rome,  where  he  was  beheade<? 
under  Nero.  These  dates  may  not  all  be  exact.  We 
take  them  from  the  careful  chronology  of  Conybear? 
and  Howson,  and  we  have  no  doubt  they  are  approx- 
imately correct.  Through  the  whole  there  is  no  al- 
lusion to  John  at  Ephesus  or  to  the  constellated 
churches  of  Asia  Minor.  We  hold  the  supposition 
utterly  baseless  that  so  early  as  the  year  6^  Christi- 
anity had  thus  spread  through  the  vicinity  of  Ephe- 
sus ;  that  seven  churches  had  been  founded  there  and 
passed  through  stages  of  growth,  corruption,  and  de- 
clension, Uke  some  of  the  seven  churches  to  which 
John  first  published  his  revelations.  The  internal  evi- 
dence, as  well  as  the  historical,  point  to  the  close  of 
the  century  as  the  true  date.  When  John  wrote  the 
Apocalypse,  therefore,  Paul  had  been  dead  twenty- 
eight  years.  John,  at  the  time  of  writing,  was  placed 
over  a  church  which  Paul  had  founded  and  nourished 
with  vast  sacrifice  and  toil.  John  had  entered  into  his 
labors  and  built  on  his  foundation.  Even  allowing 
there  might  have  ever  been  any  division  between 
them  —  of  which  we  have  not  a  shred  of  evidence  — 
the  notion  that  John  would  go  twenty-eight  years  out 
of  his  way  to  shout  "  liar,"  over  the  grave  of  the  great 


SCOPE,   ETC.,    OF  THE  APOCALYPSE.  95 

martyr,  is  rather  too  absurd  for  refutation.  In  the 
passage  cited  reference  is  made  not  to  one  man  but 
to  a  class  of  men.  "  Thou  hast  tried  them,"  he  writes 
to  the  church  at  Ephesus,  "  which  say  they  are  apos- 
tles and  are  not,  and  hast  found  them  liars."  That 
the  Cerinthian  Gnostics,  who  we  know  were  at  Eph- 
esus, and  who  pretended  to  have  revelations  from 
the  Christ  which  superseded  the  apostolic  Chris- 
tianity, are  the  persons  here  alluded  to  seems  be- 
yond all  reasonable  question. 

To  estimate  aright  the  scope  and  temper  of  the 
Apocalypse  we  must  have  some  adequate  conception 
of  the  state  of  seership  from  which  it  professes  to 
have  been  produced.  Professor  Davidson,  who  writes 
learnedly  about  this  book,  has  no  other  notion  of  that 
state  of  mind  than  the  natural  faculties  excited  to 
unwonted  fervor  and  ecstasy.  That  "  the  visions  and 
their  coloring  were  given,  is  an  assumption,"  he  says, 
"  which  deprives  the  author  of  consciousness,  and  is 
contrary  to  the  analogy  of  prophecy."  It  no  more 
deprives  the  author  of  his  consciousness,  than  the 
scenery  of  nature  given  every  day  to  our  natural 
vision,  deprives  us  of  our  consciousness  ;  and  it  is  not 
only  in  analogy  with  prophecy,  but  it  is  prophecy 
itself  in  the  exercise  of  its  highest  function.  The 
seer  has  opened  within  him  a  more  interior  con- 
sciousness, to  which  the  scenery  of  a  higher  world 
Is  unrolled.  That  scenery  he  can  describe,  and  its 
changes  he  can  note  and  chronicle,  while  his  con- 


96  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

sciousness  may  be  as  vivid  and  more  so  than  that 
of  the  astronomer  when  looking  at  the  stars.  He 
sees  events  in  their  causes  ;  in  those  spiritual  states 
and  conditions  that  lie  behind  and  within  all  material 
phenomena,  and  out  of  which  material  phenomena 
are  evolved.  Those  states  and  conditions  he  sees 
represented  by  appropriate  symbols.  Those  symbols 
may  be  given  entire,  or  they  may  be  in  his  own 
memory,  the  treasures  of  his  own  imagination  ;  as 
in  the  case  of  John,  whose  mind  was  aglow  with  the 
imagery  of  the  Savior's  discourses  fondly  preserved 
and  dwelt  upon.  In  either  case  they  are  no  longer 
his  own,  after  they  have  passed  into  scenery  which 
symbolizes  the  spiritual  truths  and  realities  of  which 
all  earthly  realities  are  only  the  outcome  and  ultima- 
tion.  To  illustrate:  the  seer  beholds  in  vision  the 
sun  in  sackcloth  and  the  moon  turned  into  blood. 
Does  this  foretell  an  echpse  of  the  sun  and  moon  in 
the  natural  world  t  Nothing  of  the  kind.  It  repre- 
sents the  divine  light  and  love  extinguished  in  hu- 
man souls,  and  the  woes  and  calamities  that  are  sure 
to  follow.  He  sees  a  conqueror,  whose  name  is  Faith- 
ful and  True,  riding  upon  a  white  horse  with  a  sharp 
sword  issuing  from  his  mouth.  Does  this  mean  that 
we  are  to  look  in  the  natural  world  for  a  man  on 
horseback  with  the  same  appearance  and  name  1 
Nothing  of  the  kind.  It  represents  plainly  Divine 
Truth  in  its  triumphal  power.  He  sees  a  city  lying 
waste,  and  the  temple  in  it  about  to  be  thrown  dowa 


SCOPE,   ETC.,    OF  THE  APOCALYPSE.  97 

Does  this  mean  that  some  city  answering  to  it  in  ap- 
pearance is  to  be  destroyed  ?  Nothing  of  the  kind. 
It  means  that  a  system  of  reHgion  is  to  be  over- 
thrown whose  worship  has  become  false,  and  whose 
unitizing  life  has  gone.  In  short,  the  psychological 
condition  of  the  seer  is  such  that  he  sees  spiritual 

THINGS  REPRESENTED  BY  NATURAL  THINGS.      We  shall 

turn  his  vision  into  delirious  nonsense  when  we  in- 
terpret him  as  representing  natural  things  by  natural 
things. 

And  yet  this  is  precisely  what  a  long  series  of  in- 
terpreters, ending  with  Professor  Davidson,  have  been 
trying  to  do.  Swedenborg  is  the  only  interpreter  we 
have  ever  met  with  who  does  not  flounder  in  this 
interminable  slough.  He  keeps  consistently  on  the 
spiritual  plane,  and  though  we  do  not  pretend  to  un- 
derstand his  entire  exegesis,  we  believe  his  method 
is  the  only  rational  one  for  interpreting  a  purely  sym- 
bohcal  book,  and  that  in  the  work  under  considera- 
tion, it  unfolds  some  of  the  profoundest  truths  that 
ever  searched  the  nature  of  man. 

The  eleventh  chapter  speaks  of  "  the  temple  of 
God,"  as  seen  in  vision,  and  which  the  angel  was  to 
measure  with  a  reed,  and  of  the  great  city  which 
spiritually  is  called  Sodom  and  Egypt,  where  the 
Lord  was  crucified.  This,  say  the  critics,  must  mean 
Jerusalem  ;  therefore  Jerusalem  and  its  temple  must 
have  been  standing  at  the  time.  Why  do  not  these 
critics  keep  on  with  this  style  of  exegesis  instead  of 
7 


98  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

playing  fast  and  loose  with  it  ?  What  do  they  mak* 
of  the  two  witnesses  in  this  self-same  city,  which 
were  also  "  the  two  olive-trees  and  the  two  candle- 
sticks which  stand  before  the  Lord,"  and  which  have 
power  to  shut  heaven  that  it  rain  not  for  a  thousand 
two  hundred  and  sixty  days  ;  whose  mouths  emitted 
fire  that  devoured  their  enemies,  and  who  have  power 
over  the  waters  to  turn  them  into  blood  ?  Were  these 
two  remarkable  persons  living  in  Jerusalem  in  the 
days  of  Nero  ?  And  if  the  Jerusalem  of  the  eleventh 
chapter  with  the  temple  therein,  was  the  veritable 
stone-mason  work  which  Titus  captured  and  de- 
stroyed in  A.  D,  70,  pray  what  was  the  masonry  of  the 
New  Jerusalem  of  the  twenty-second  chapter  which 
was  to  succeed  it  and  stand  upon  its  ruins  ?  Most 
remarkable  mason-work  indeed  !  A  city  coming 
down  ready  built  out  of  the  sky,  exactly  cubical  in 
shape,  its  length  and  breadth  and  height  equal  each 
to  twelve  thousand  furlongs  !  A  city,  whose  walls 
and  buildings  were  fifteen  hundred  miles  high,  must 
have  had  a  very  wonderful  and  original  style  of  archi- 
tecture. 

There  is  no  end  to  these  bewildering  fantasies 
when  we  try  to  follow  the  method  of  these  critics, 
and  find  in  the  Apocalypse  literal  cities  and  temples, 
or  such  people  of  flesh  and  blood  as  Nero,  Titus, 
Vespasian,  and  Napoleon  Bonaparte  ;  or  Roman, 
Parthian,  Saracen,  and  French  armies  in  full  cos- 
tume.   When  we  make  the  natural  imagery  in  it  rep- 


SCOPE,   ETC.,   OF  THE  APOCALYPSE,  99 

resent  natural  persons  and  things,  the  confusion  be- 
comes worse  and  worse  confounded.  When  we  make 
natural  things  represent  spiritual  things,  and  those 
only,  light  and  order  will  begin  to  appear. 

After  the  prologue  or  address  to  the  constellated 
churches,  the  Apocalypse  naturally  falls  into  three 
divisions.  There  are  three  successive  revelations 
and  scenic  representations  of  things  that  were  to  be. 
In  the  first  revelation  the  Jewish  religion  is  the 
theme.  The  quality  of  its  interior  life,  of  its  entire 
system  of  faith  and  worship,  is  explored  and  laid 
open ;  its  consummation  and  dissolution  are  de- 
scribed, and  the  quality  of  that  remnant  which  are  to 
be  saved  out  of  it  and  given  to  the  Lamb.  The 
preparation  for  judgment,  and  the  execution  thereof, 
are  symbolized  in  successive  groups  of  sublime  and 
terrible  imagery.  This  occupies  the  book  as  we  read 
it  from  the  fourth  to  the  twelfth  chapters  inclusive. 
The  Jewish  ecclesiasticism,  which  had  become  cor- 
rupt and  apostate  by  the  sensualization  of  its  faith 
and  worship,  is  typified  by  Sodom  or  Egypt,  in  which 
the  Lord  is  crucified  ;  that  is,  in  which  the  Divine 
Life  is  extinguished. 

In  the  second  revelation  the  Roman  religion  is 
evidently  the  theme.  It  is  the  city  of  Babylon,  in 
which  the  Great  Harlot  sits  upon  seven  hills.  The 
perversion  of  all  faith,  the  falsification  of  all  truth 
used  for  self-exaltation  and  arbitrary  power ;  its  crae! 
and  depraving  influence ;  the  divine  judgment  that 


ICO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

explores  and  lays  open  its  hideous  qualities  and 
dooms  it  to  hell,  we  understand  to  occupy  the  book 
from  the  thirteenth  to  the  twentieth  chapter  inclu- 
sive. 

These  false  religions,  being  adjudged  and  cleared 
out  of  the  way  by  the  conquering  power  of  the 
Divine  Word,  the  hindrances  are  removed  for  the 
New  Jerusalem  to  descend.  The  Old  Jerusalem  has 
vanished,  and  Babylon  has  fallen,  and  now  Christian- 
ity, the  reign  of  peace  and  brotherhood,  the  visible 
presence  of  God  with  men,  is  to  succeed  them.  It 
appears  to  the  seer  objectively,  symbolized  by  the 
same  sweet  and  beautiful  imagery  which  glows  in  the 
discourses  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  and  in  the  language 
of  the  old  prophets  ;  only  what  the  old  prophets  saw 
in  twilight,  John  sees  in  serene  and  mellow  noontide 
falling  down  from  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the 
Lamb.  The  New  Jerusalem  has  its  length  and 
breadth  and  height  exactly  equal ;  its  system  of  truth 
and  doctrine,  that  is,  neither  perverted,  nor  distorted, 
nor  corrupted,  is  perfectly  symmetrical  ;  and  the  city 
depends  not  on  the  lights  which  men  kindle,  nor  on 
the  light  of  nature,  for  "the  Lamb  is  the  light  there- 
of" The  whole  scenery  bathed  in  mystic  splendor, 
is  beyond  the  reach  of  art,  beyond  anything  which 
human  genius  ever  produced  from  its  richest  treas- 
uries. 

Such  are  the  three  divisions  of  the  Apocalypse, 
though  the  first  and  second  interblend  imperceptibly 


SCOPE,  ETC.,    OF  THE  APOCiLYPSE.  lOI 

with  each  other,  for  the  reason  that  systems  of  false 
religion  which  are  there  explored  and  adjudged,  have 
much  in  common  that  is  corrupt  and  bad.  In  the 
first  division  the  baleful  consequences  of  separating 
religion  from  life  are  described  as  they  never  were 
before  or  since.  The  religious  faith  which  has  no 
love  in  it,  in  which  the  last  throb  of  humanity  has 
ceased  to  beat,  leaving  it  hard,  cruel,  and  deformed, 
has  lost  the  human  features  and  the  human  shape, 
and  has  become  a  Great  Dragon,  drawing  the  stars 
from  heaven,  putting  out  the  benign  lights  in  the 
firmament  of  the  soul.  The  worship  without  faith, 
rehearsing  its  dreary  litanies,  parading  its  gorgeous 
forms  after  they  have  been  emptied  of  all  divine 
meaning,  after  all  true  knowledge  of  God  has  leaked 
out  of  them,  and  contempt  and  denial  have  come  in 
the  place  of  it,  to  which  the  sun  becomes  black  as 
sackcloth  of  hair  and  the  moon  becomes  as  blood, 
has  ceased  to  bless  and  to  save  ;  and  the  moral  and 
spiritual  chaos  that  follows  is  imaged  in  the  falling 
stars,  and  the  mountains  moved  from  their  places. 
All  shades  and  degrees  of  the  faith  in  which  there 
is  no  love  of  man,  and  the  worship  in  which  there 
is  no  knowledge  or  love  of  God,  are  laid  open  and 
described.  And  last  of  all  the  religion  whose  doc- 
trines and  forms  are  used  for  self-aggrandizement  and 
self-exaltation,  in  which  human  ambitions  and  hatreds 
are  enthroned  in  the  place  of  God,  is  explored,  and 
its  interior  quality  disclosed.     It  is  the  ecclesiasticaJ 


102  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

power  which  blasphemously  usurps  the  seat  of  the 
divine  judgment  to  tyrannize  over  the  minds  and 
bodies  of  men,  always  full  of  abominations  and  drunk 
with  the  blood  of  the  saints  and  the  blood  of  the 
martyrs.  This  is  the  great  harlot  of  Babylon  sitting 
on  her  seven  hills.  It  is  the  love  of  power  subsi- 
dizing the  religious  sentiment  to  its  infernal  ends, 
and  using  its  machinery  not  to  bless  but  to  oppress 
mankind,  —  the  worst  of  the  seven  plagues  that  have 
fallen  upon  them. 

That  the  Jewish  and  Roman  religions  are  here 
explored,  and  their  interiors  exposed  and  adjudged 
under  the  "  seven  trumpets  "  of  God,  has  been  the 
opinion  of  Protestant  expositors  generally.  The 
Jews  had  crucified  the  Lord  spiritually  before  they 
nailed  the  Lord  Jesus  to  the  cross.  Within  their 
gorgeous  ceremonials  the  Divine  Life  was  extinct, 
and  charity  and  humanity  had  ceased  to  pulsate 
through  them.  Pagan  Rome  was  sitting  on  her  seven 
hills  drunk  with  the  blood  of  martyrs,  and  a  pagan- 
ized Christianity  was  to  succeed  her  with  like  power 
over  the  souls  and  bodies  of  men.  It  is  important 
to  observe,  however,  that  not  persons  nor  places, 
not  Jerusalem  and  its  pharisees,  nor  Rome  with  its 
emperors,  nor  the  Roman  Church  with  its  papal 
tyrannies,  are  to  be  looked  for  exclusively  in  the 
Apocalypse.  Not  persons,  but  states  of  mind  and  de- 
pravities of  heart  infesting  our  human  nature  univer- 
sally, are  described  in  the  symbolization  of  the  seer ; 


SCOPE.    ETC,    OF  THE  APOCALYPSE,  103 

depravities  of  which  all  the  Neros  and  Napoleons  are 
the  visible  incarnation,  and  all  ecclesiasticisms,  used 
to  serve  the  ends  of  human  ambition  and  pride,  are 
the  body  and  form. 

Faith  severed  from  life,  dogma  hard  and  frozen 
with  no  pulse  of  charity  in  it,  worship,  whose  form 
stands  forth  as  a  gorgeous  shell  emptied  alike  of 
the  knowledge  of  God  and  the  love  of  man,  —  these 
are  the  same  in  quality,  whether  we  call  them  by 
Jewish  or  Christian  names,  and  the  hatreds  and 
strifes  which  they  engender  in  the  name  of  religion, 
are  the  plagues  that  fall  upon  men  ;  out  of  these 
comes  the  pale  horse,  and  the  name  of  him  that  sits 
thereon  is  Death,  and  hell  follows  with  him,  and  power 
is  given  him  over  the  earth  to  kill  with  sword  and 
with  hunger  and  with  death  and  with  the  beasts  of 
the  earth. 

Babylon  is  Rome ;  —  human  pride  and  ambition 
usurping  the  seat  of  God,  and  blasphemously  sending 
forth  anathemas  in  his  name.  But  every  church 
which  has  done  the  same  is  also  Rome,  and  is  apos- 
tate. The  fires  of  Smithfield  are  not  more  lurid  than 
the  fires  of  Geneva ;  and  the  plagues  that  fall  on  the 
bodies  of  men  are  not  worse  than  those  which  blight 
the  soul.  Not  anything  in  the  natural  world,  whether 
of  men  or  cities,  appears  in  the  vision  of  the  seer. 
But  the  infernal  depravities,  born  of  our  uncleansed 
human  nature,  latent  alike,  reader,  m  your  heart 
»nd  in  mine,  subsidizing  even  the  religious  sentiment 


104  "^^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

to  the  service  of  its  own  lust,  aggrandizement  and 
glory,  and  pouring  out  the  seven  plagues  on  the 
earth  and  on  the  sea,  are  the  Apocalypse  of  woe  irre- 
spective of  person  and  time  ;  and  if  we  read  it,  more 
willing  to  be  searched  beneath  it  than  to  judge  others 
by  it,  no  book  that  ever  was  written  would  open  into 
more  startling  sunlight  the  pages  of  our  book  of  life. 
There  is  no  priesthood,  Roman  or  Protestant,  which 
does  not  need  betimes  the  exploration  of  its  trumpet 
voices,  to  show  them  whether  they  are  using  the 
forms  of  Christianity  for  their  own  power  and  glory, 
or  only  to  bless  and  save  mankind.  There  is  no 
church,  Roman  or  Protestant,  which  does  not  need 
to  have  its  ruling  motive  and  that  of  all  its  members 
revealed  to  its  consciousness  ;  and  if  religion  is  some- 
thing apart  from  life,  if  faith  is  divorced  from  works, 
held  and  professed  only  for  a  man's  personal  salvation, 
and  not  made  warm  and  radiant  with  all  the  charities 
and  humanities,  they  should  find  themselves  revealed 
in  this  book  quite  as  much  as  the  dynasties  that  have 
passed  away.  Not  material  weapons,  not  flesh  and 
blood,  but  evils  and  delusions  of  the  heart  and  mind, 
hinder  the  descent  of  the  New  Jerusalem. 

And  the  New  Jerusalem  is  neither  a  lo  !  here  nor  a 
lo  !  there.  It  is  not  an  ecclesiasticism,  but  a  form  of 
faith,  of  doctrine,  and  of  worship,  so  warm  with  the 
love  of  the  Lord  that  He  abides  in  the  soul,  the  river 
of  its  peace,  the  fountain  of  its  charities,  the  inspira- 
tion of  its  tender  humanities,  after  all  the  old  Juda* 


SCOPE,   ETC.,    OF   THE  APOCALYPSE.  105 

ism  and  Romanism  have  been  adjudged  and  cast 
away.  It  is  Christianity  unitizing  God,  man,  and 
nature  ;  making  our  cleansed  and  renovated  human- 
ity the  tabernacle  of  God  with  men,  and  thence 
turning  the  earth  into  Eden,  and  making  it  the  reflex 
image  of  the  skies.  It  descends  into  all  minds,  and 
thence  into  all  the  ecclesiasticisms,  as  we  renounce 
our  Judaism  and  our  heathenism  for  the  spirit  of  uni- 
versal brotherhood,  and  then  "  the  nations  of  them 
that  are  saved  do  walk  in  the  light  of  it,  and  the  kings 
of  the  earth  do  bring  their  honor  and  glory  into  it." 

The  worship  and  ritual  of  heaven,  and  thence  of 
the  New  Jerusalem  descending  out  of  it,  in  contrast 
with  the  worship  whose  interior  truths  have  been 
perverted  or  lost,  is  set  forth  in  one  of  those  chapters 
which  open  into  the  serene  vistas  of  the  higher 
world.  The  heart  becomes  tender  and  warm  in  the 
light  which  comes  down  through  it  from  the  cen- 
tral glory.  "God  and  the  Lamb"  is  the  twofold 
designation  of  the  object  of  the  Christian's  supreme 
worship  and  love.  This  does  not  imply  any  divided 
homage,  but  the  Lamb  is  a  predicate  of  the  one 
divine  Being,  and  sets  forth  his  relations  to  the  creat- 
ures He  has  made.  Its  essential  meaning  is  sacri- 
fice, and  coupled  with  the  divine  name  it  signifies 
that  God  himself  is  one  great  sacrifice  for  man.  Not 
alone  in  the  sacrifice  on  Calvary  He  gives  himself 
away  for  the  expiation  and  forgiveness  of  sin.  Be- 
yond its  solemn  heights  and  away  through  the  door 


I06  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

opened  into  heaven,  He  appears  as  the  essential  sac- 
rifice given  hourly  for  the  redemption  of  the  world. 
Ever  going  out  of  himself,  and  coming  down  to  our 
lowly  condition,  underlying  all  our  weaknesses,  and 
helping  us  bear  up  our  weary  burdens,  present  in  all 
our  sufferings  and  suffering  with  us,  sinking  himself 
out  of  sight  beneath  our  mortal  infirmities,  clothing 
himself  with  them,  as  it  were,  that  He  may  help  us 
the  more  ;  rejected,  injured,  wounded,  grieved  away 
by  our  hardness  of  heart  and  blindness  of  mind,  his 
very  life  killed  out  of  us  when  striving  most  to  enter 
and  save  us,  —  such  is  the  eternal  sacrifice  of  God  ; 
and  so  when  we  look  up  to  the  throne  with  eyes  made 
wet  with  repentance,  we  see  not  the  thunder-clouds 
of  wrath  but  a  lamb  as  it  had  been  slain. 

Truth,  as  seen  by  the  pure  intellect,  is  white  and 
silvery  ;  but  truth  transfused  and  made  chromatic 
with  the  divine  love  is  golden  ;  and  when  it  rules 
right  royally  over  the  conscience  and  the  life,  it 
crowns  us,  and  we  wear  it  as  our  diadem  of  praise. 
But  how  prone  we  are  to  wear  it  as  our  personal 
adornment ;  as  something  which  we  have  wrought 
out  and  perfected,  and  so  make  it  our  crown  of  pride, 
to  draw  with  it  the  admiration  and  applause  of  the 
crowd  !  Hence  all  our  priestly  ambitions  and  all  the 
selfish  motives  by  which  the  rites  of  worship  have 
been  made  aglow  with  strange  fire.  Hence  the  con- 
troversies that  have  been  waged  only  for  persona* 
victory.     Hence  our  pulpit  eloquence  is  so  prevail- 


SCOPE,  ETC.,   OF  THE  APOCALYPSE.  10/ 

ingly  an  exhibition  of  self-love  or  the  love  of  popular 
applause,  and  hence  our  churches  are  gathered  ad- 
miringly around  the  preacher  who  expands  so  largely 
with  the  breath  of  praise,  that  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
is  not  seen  at  all,  but  is  kept  behind  him  out  of 
sight.  But  when  we  get  gleams  of  the  ritual  of 
heaven,  the  elders  who  wear  crowns  of  gold  cast 
them  down  at  the  feet  of  Him  that  sitteth  on  the 
throne,  saying :  "  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  worthy."  The 
whole  scene,  both  in  the  description  and  the  sym- 
bolic meaning,  is  impressive  and  grand  beyond  all 
human  conception,  and  we  never  read  it  without 
being  ashamed  of  the  strut  and  vanity  of  our  ecclesi- 
astical pomps  so  faintly  chromatic  with  the  divine  love, 
nor  without  an  aspiration  that  the  crowns  we  wear  of 
so  lurid  and  fiery  a  lustre  may  be  exchanged  betimes 
for  the  crowns  of  gold,  fit  to  be  cast  down  in  that 
beautiful  ceremonial  which  ascribes  "blessing  and 
honor  and  glory  and  power  unto  him  that  sitteth  on 
the  throne  and  unto  the  Lamb,  for  ever  and  ever." 

How  stands  the  question,  then,  as  regards  the  spirit 
and  temper  of  the  Apocalypse }  Is  a  book  which 
describes  the  consequences  of  divorcing  religion  from 
lift.,  and  worship  from  humanity,  and  dogma  from 
chanty,  foreshowing  the  states  of  mind  which  ulti- 
mate in  baleful  results  by  a  symbolization,  compared 
with  which  Homer's  battle-pictures  are  feeble  and 
tame,  —  written  in  the  interest  of  humanity  or  not } 
Is  the  book  Jewish  in  spirit  which  depicts  what  was 


I08  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

false  and  evil  in  Judaism,  and  doomed  the  Jewish 
Church  to  its  downfall?  It  is  vain  to  cite  its  im- 
agery of  retributive  wrath,  such  as  "  the  wrath  of  the 
Lamb,"  "  the  wine-press  of  the  fierceness  and  wrath 
of  Almighty  God,"  as  if  this  were  descriptive  of  the 
temper  of  the  Divine  mind,  and  not  rather  the  results 
of  retributive  law  in  complete  operation.  That  is  not 
a  clear  and  healthful,  but  rather  a  confused  and  weak 
moral  sentiment  which  revolts  against  the  most  thor- 
ough exploration  of  the  hiding-places  of  sin,  and  the 
most  faithful  portraiture  of  its  nature  and  conse- 
quences. All  that  the  Apocalypse  described  in  the 
realm  of  causes  has  had  its  fulfillment  in  history.  All 
the  thunder-clouds  which  it  painted  as  hanging  over 
the  future  Church,  have  broken  upon  it  with  their 
burden  of  plague  and  lightning  and  great  hail.  And 
beyond  those  thunder-clouds,  and  only  as  they  clear 
the  horizon,  has  the  New  Jerusalem  been  seen  to 
descend.  If  it  is  cruel  and  vindictive  to  lay  open  to 
our  gaze  the  virus  that  lurks  in  false  religion  or  in  the 
uncleansed  human  heart,  and  thence  poisons  the  rela- 
tions of  life,  making  the  sweetest  fountains  run  gall 
^nd  turning  the  rivers  into  blood,  then  the  spirit  of 
the  Apocalypse  is  bad.  But  if  it  is  good  for  men  or 
for  a  church  to  see  as  in  a  mirror,  the  evils  that  lurk 
within  them,  and  if  unresisted  shut  them  off  from 
heaven  both  here  and  hereafter,  then  the  Apocalypse 
is  one  of  the  most  humane  in  spirit  of  any  book  that 
ever  was  addressed  to  the  human  conscience. 


SCOPE y  ETC.,    OF  THE  APOCALYPSE.  109 

Long  before  our  civil  war,  caused  by  the  rebellion 
of  the  slave  power  against  the  American  government, 
some  of  our  poet-prophets  foretold  the  conflict  and 
the  calamities  which  it  would  involve.  In  the  evils 
of  slavery,  and  the  states  of  mind  which  it  engen- 
dered, they  saw  an  Apocalypse  of  woe,  and  described 
it  in  appropriate  imagery.  Herein  they  prophesied 
not  from  a  spirit  of  cruelty  or  vindictiveness,  but 
from  a  spirit  of  humanity  and  mercy.  No  strains 
more  tender  and  humane  can  be  found  in  the  com- 
pass of  modern  literature,  than  the  strains  of  Whit- 
tier  and  Lowell ;  and  yet  both  prophesied  against  our 
modern  Babylon  in  types  which  come  as  near  to 
those  of  the  Apocalypse  as  they  could  well  do  with- 
out passing  into  the  objective  scenery  of  the  seer. 
Take  the  following  examples  from  Whittier  :  — 

"Take  your  slavery-blackened  vales, 
Give  us  but  our  own  free  gales 
Blowing  on  our  thousand  sails. 

"Live  like  paupers  mean  and  vile 
On  the  fruits  of  unpaid  toil, 
Locusts  of  your  glorious  soiL 

"  Live  if  it  be  life  to  dwell 
In  your  tyrant  citadel, 
Mined  beneath  by  fires  from  hell. 

"Our  bleak  hills  shall  bud  and  blow 
Vines  our  rocks  shall  overgrow, 
Plenty  in  our  valleys  flow. 


yO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

"And  when  vengeance  lights  your  skies, 
Hither  shall  ye  turn  your  eyes. 
As  the  damned  on  Paradise." 

**  Hold  while  ye  may  your  struggling  slaves,  and  burden  God's  free 
air 
With  woman's  shriek  beneath  the  lash,  and  manhood's  wild  despair ; 
Cling  closer  to  the  cleaving  curse  that  writes  upon  your  plains 
The  blasting  of  Almighty  wrath  against  a  land  of  chains." 

Or  this  from  Lowell :  — 

"  Out  from  the  land  of  bondage  'tis  decreed  our  slaves  shall  go^ 
And  signs  to  us  are  offered  as  erst  to  Pharaoh  ; 
If  we  are  blind,  their  exodus,  like  Israel's  of  yore, 
Through  a  Red  Sea  is  doomed  to  be  whose  surges  are  of  gore.** 

The  inspiration  of  prophecy,  and  of  poetry  which 
becomes  prophecy  because  the  voice  of  the  divine 
justice  speaks  through  it,  approximate  both  in  style 
and  spirit.  They  divine  by  a  more  unerring  vision 
the  malign  nature  of  moral  and  spiritual  evil,  and 
select  by  the  same  vision  the  things  in  nature  most 
fit  to  represent  and  shadow  it  forth.  Hence  the  poet, 
who  is  not  a  mere  sentimentalist,  approaches  the 
state  of  seership  and  sees  nature,  both  in  her  baleful 
and  benignant  phases,  the  exponent  of  man  in  his 
infernal  or  his  heavenly  states  ;  humanity,  in  fact, 
turned  inside  out ;  and,  in  the  symbolism  which  he 
employs,  representing  spiritual  things  by  natural 
things,  he  only  gives  to  the  human  soul,  and  thence 
to  churches,  societies,  and  communities,  which  are 
the  collective  man,   the  mysteries  that  lie  within 


SCOPE,   ETC.,   OF   THE  APOCALYPSE.  Ill 

them  ;  warning  them  of  evils  which  have  not  yet 
passed  into  history  and  had  their  ultimations  in 
heaven  or  hell.  "  The  wrath  of  the  Lamb  poured 
out  without  mixture  from  the  cup  of  his  indignation," 
describes  not  the  essence  of  the  Deity  but  the  aspect 
of  his  nature  towards  men  in  those  false  religions 
which  quench  his  mercy  and  love ;  even  as  the  poet 
who  sings  of  the  Eternal  Goodness  as  few  poets  have 
ever  done,  sings  also  of  "  the  blasting  of  Almighty 
wrath  against  a  land  of  chains." 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   WITNESSES    OF   THE    SECOND    CENTURY. 

T  T  becomes  important  to  survey  one  moment  the 
•^  theatre  over  which  Christianity  extended  its 
sway  during  the  first  two  centuries.  The  Roman 
empire  was  bounded  by  the  Euphrates  on  the  east 
and  the  Atlantic  ocean  on  the  west ;  by  the  Danube 
on  the  north  and  by  the  African  deserts  on  the  south, 
while  in  the  northwest  it  crossed  the  channel  and  in- 
cluded Britain  then  sunk  in  barbarism.  The  peoples 
were  separated  by  vast  varieties  of  climate,  manners, 
language,  local  governments  and  religions.  There 
were  the  voluptuousness  of  the  East  and  the  hardi- 
ness of  the  West.  There  were  the  hot  blood  of  the 
South  and  the  cold  blood  of  the  North.  There  were 
the  languages  of  Demosthenes  and  of  Cicero  ;  there 
was  the  Hebrew  and  its  cognates  heard  throughout 
the  East  in  the  worship  of  the  synagogues  and  in  the 
marts  of  trade,  and  there  were  the  horrid  gutturals 
of  the  savage  in  the  groves  of  Germany  and  on  the 
banks  of  the  Rhine. 

Before  the  close  of  the  second  century,  Christian- 
ity had  penetrated  this  vast  region  so  as  to  streak 
the  darkness  everywhere  with  light.     Churches  had 


WITNESSES  OF   THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      1 13 

sprung  up  east,  west,  north,  and  south.     It  had  even 
passed  over  the   Euphrates  into  the  great  Parthian 
empire.     It  had  become  firmly  fixed  in  nearly  all  the 
great  cities  and  centres  of  population,   and   thence 
ramified    through    the   surrounding   country.      The 
magnificent  Roman  roads,  radiating  from  the  eternal 
city  throughout  the  empire  over  which  the  life  of  the 
world  poured  its   turbid  streams,  wonderfully  facili- 
tated this  early  diffusion   of  Christianity.      By  the 
year  175  it  had  spread  through  Syria,  through  lesser 
Asia,  through  Greece  and  the  islands  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, and  entering  Egypt  it  had  travelled  up  the 
Nile.     It  was  estabhshed  at  Rome,  and  thence  it  had 
gone  south  and  skirted  the  southern  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean  even  into  the  heart  of  Mauritania.     It 
had  entered  Gaul,  and  had  flourishing  churches  at 
Lyons  and  Vienna.     Churches  had  sprung  up  in  all 
these  provinces,  sundered  some  of  them  from  each 
other  by  the  space  of  two  thousand  miles,  sundered 
too   by   diversities   of  language   and   manners,  but 
united  internally  by   a   spiritual   bond,  and  having 
common   traditions  whose  Hnes  converged  towards 
one  majestic  person  who  had  appeared  in  Palestine. 
Starting  now  with  the  last  quarter  of  the  second 
century  what  do  we  find  .?      We  find  a  canon  of 
Scripture   received  and   established    in    all   these 
churches  without  exception.     We  mean  by  this  that 
certain  books,  regarded  S7ci  generis,  elevated  far  above 
the  level  of  common  literature,  were  universally  ap- 


114  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

pealed  to  as  commanding  authority  in  all  matters 
of  life  and  doctrine,  and  read  as  Holy  Scripture  in 
the  churches  when  they  came  together  for  worship. 
Prominent  in  this  canon  of  Scripture  were  the  four 
Gospels,  as  we  have  them,  and  in  the  order  in  which 
we  have  them  received  as  authentic  and  genuine,  and 
as  a  legacy  to  these  churches  from  the  hands  that 
wrote  them.  It  is  the  testimony  not  of  an  individual 
here  and  there.  It  is  the  unanimous  testimony  of  an 
entire  generation.  Clement  of  Alexandria  in  Egypt, 
Tertullian  at  Carthage,  Irenaeus  at  Lyons  in  Gaul, 
Polycrates  at  Ephesus,  and  Theophilus  at  Antioch, 
either  quote  the  four  Gospels,  or  refer  to  them,  not  as 
describing  their  individual  faith,  but  the  faith  of  the 
churches  throughout  the  then  civilized  world.  Their 
testimony  is  not  their  own  merely,  but  that  of  the 
churches  thus  scattered  and  separated,  whose  lines 
of  tradition  are  unbroken,  and  all  converging  to  a 
common  centre.^ 

How  long  must  these  books  have  been  in  circula- 
tion to  be  thus  unanimously  and  universally  re- 
ceived ?  It  will  flash  upon  almost  any  man's  com- 
mon sense  that  they  could  not  then  have  been  recent 
and  modern,  that  they  must  date  back  more  than 
twenty-five  or  even  fifty  years,  and  that  the  notion 
that  any  one  of  them  originated  or  took  its   final 

^  Read  Norton's  work ;  Fisher's  admirable  Essays  on  the  Super- 
natural Origin  of  Christianity^  Essay  ii. ;  or  see  the  evidence  con- 
cisely put  in  Tischendorf 's  tract :  Wenn  vmrden  unsere  Evangelien 
ver/asitf 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENT  UP  Y.      II5 

form'  after  the  middle  of  the  century,  and  thus  sud- 
denly found  its  way  as  Holy  Scripture  into  churches 
of  different  languages,  and  a  thousand  miles  apart,  is 
one  of  the  wildest  absurdities. 

But  look  at  the  matter  in  something  more  of  de- 
tail. Who  and  what  were  the  generation  of  Chris- 
tian believers  living  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  second 
century  ?  Many  of  them  were  men  and  women  who 
received  their  Christian  faith  and  7iurture  from  the 
men  who  had  seen  the  Apostles  themselves  and  sat  at 
their  feet. 

The  churches  at  Lyons  and  Vienna  in  Gaul  in  the 
year  i  '^'j  were  called  to  endure  a  persecution  so  cruel 
and  vindictive,  that  it  seemed  not  to  have  been  in- 
flicted by  men  but  by  wolves  in  the  shape  of  men. 
After  the  storm  had  spent  its  rage  these  churches 
sent  a  letter  to  the  churches  in  Asia  Minor  describing 
the  calamity  that  had  come  upon  them.  Eusebius 
preserves  copious  extracts  from  this  letter.  It  is  in  a 
triumphant  strain,  and  rises  sometimes  to  a  fervid  el- 
oquence. This  letter  quotes  the  fourth  Gospel,  once 
a  whole  passage  verbatim,  and  it  quotes  the  Apoca- 
lypse not  less  than  three  times.  But  more  than  this. 
Not  only  the  language  of  the  Scriptures  enters  largely 
and  spontaneously  into  it,  but  their  very  life  throbs 
through  the  sentences  and  compels  the  conviction 
that  these  people  had  the  New  Testament,  and  read 
it  as  we  read  it,  and  bathed  their  inmost  souls  in  its 
spirit. 


Il6  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Who  were  the  teachers  of  this  church  at  Lyons  in 
177  ?  One  was  the  aged  bishop  Pothinus,  passed 
now  his  ninetieth  year  with  his  streaming  gray  hairs, 
led  forth  to  death  for  the  faith  he  loved.  He  was  a 
boy  twelve  years  old  while  John  was  living  at  Ephe- 
sus ;  he  had  lived  in  Asia  Minor  through  his  boy- 
hood and  younger  manhood  ;  he  must  have  seen  and 
conversed  with  the  companions  of  the  Apostles,  and 
he  was  old  enough  to  have  seen  and  conversed  with 
the  beloved  disciple  himself  Another  teacher  of  this 
church  was  Irenaeus,  the  associate  of  the  aged  Po- 
thinus. Irenaeus  says  the  Gospel  was  transmitted  to 
them  in  writing  and  he  goes  on  to  specify  the  fourth 
Gospel  as  published  by  John  "while  he  dwelt  at 
Ephesus  in  Asia."  He  cites  the  four  Gospels  as  we 
have  them,  and  calls  them  "  the  pillar  and  support  of 
the  Church  and  the  breath  of  life." 

Who  was  Irenaeus }  Look  over  the  map  and  you 
will  find  the  city  of  Smyrna  a  few  hours'  journey 
from  Ephesus.  There  at  Smyrna  was  one  of  the 
constellated  churches,  and  over  it  presided  the  saint- 
ly and  venerable  Polycarp,  the  disciple  of  John. 
Polycarp  sat  at  the  feet  of  the  beloved  disciple  and 
others  who  had  seen  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  he  heard 
them  recount  over  and  over  the  works  which  Jesus 
did  and  the  speech  which  fell  from  his  Ups.  Irenaeus 
was  a  disciple  of  Polycarp,  and  heard  the  same  things 
over  from  him,  and  he  tells  us  how  they  agreed  with 
what  John  had  ivritten  in  that  selfsame  gospel  which 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      11/ 

the  churches  had  received.  Says  Irenaeus  in  a  letter 
to  Florinus,  his  friend  and  former  fellow  pupil  with 
Polycarp,  "  I  saw  thee  in  my  youth  in  lower  Asia 
with  Polycarp ,  —  for  I  remember  the  events  of  those 
times  much  better  than  those  of  recent  occurrence ; 
what  we  learn  in  fact  in  our  youth,  grows  with  our 
soul,  and  grows  together  with  it  so  closely,  that  I  can 
even  yet  tell  the  place  where  the  holy  Polycarp  sat 
when  he  discoursed,  his  entrance  and  exit,  the  pecu- 
liarities of  his  mode  of  life,  his  bodily  figure,  the  dis- 
courses which  he  addressed  to  the  people  ;  how  he 
told  of  his  familiar  intercourse  with  John,  and  with 
the  rest  who  had  seen  the  Lord  ;  how  he  narrated  their 
discourses,  and  what  he  had  heard  from  them  in  re- 
gard to  the  Lord  about  his  miracles  and  doctrine,  all 
of  which,  as  Polycarp  had  received  it  from  those  who 
were  eye-witnesses  of  the  word  of  life,  he  narrated  in 
harmony  with  the  Holy  Scriptures  ;  these  things  by 
the  mercy  of  God  then  granted  to  me,  I  attentively 
heard  and  noted  down,  not  on  paper,  but  in  my 
heart,  and  by  the  grace  of  God  I  continually  repeat 
it  faithfully."  Irenaeus,  who  brings  us  thus  near  to 
the  beloved  disciple,  wrote  with  considerable  ability 
against  the  Gnostics,  and  other  heretics  of  his  day, 
all  of  whom  he  says  appealed  to  the  four  Gospels 
and  acknowledged  them  as  authority.  He  cites  in 
this  treatise  not  less  than  four  hundred  passages 
from  the  Gospels  and  more  than  eighty  from  the 
Gospel  of  John.    Would  he  not  be  likely  to  know  the 


Il8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

origin  of  the  book  which  he  quotes  as  undoubted 
having  been  thus  brought  almost  "vithin  hearing 
where  the  contents  of  the  book  fell  fresh  from  the 
writer's  lips  ? 

There  was  a  man  whose  birth  dates  about  the  year 
125,  when  a  great  many  were  yet  living  who  had 
known  John  and  his  fellow  disciples.  He  was  edu- 
cated in  a  Christian  family.  Moreover  his  family 
was  directly  connected  with  John's  contemporaries, 
and  seven  of  its  members  had  held  the  office  of 
bishop  or  presbyter.  This  man  was  Polycrates.  At 
the  date  we  have  assumed,  175,  he  was  fifty  years 
old.  A  few  years  later,  during  the  last  decade  of  the 
century,  he  became  Bishop  of  Ephesus,  and  there  on 
the  scene  of  the  labor  and  death  of  the  beloved  dis- 
ciple, he  dwells  complacently  upon  his  memory,  and 
refers  to  the  place  of  his  sepulture  as  well  known  to 
the  Church.  He  describes  himself  as  "  having  con- 
ferred with  the  brethren  throughout  the  world,  and 
studied  the  whole  of  the  sacred  Scriptures!'  There 
with  the  fourth  Gospel  in  his  hand,  transmitted  in 
the  church  at  Ephesus,  where  it  was  read  and  had 
long  been  read  as  the  writing  of  John,  having  known 
the  men  who  knew  the  Apostle,  —  he  uses  it  as  the 
unquestioned  work  of  the  man  whose  name  it  bears. 
In  the  church  over  which  John  himself  presided, 
the  custodian  of  the  writings  he  left,  and  among 
which  they  were  read  as  Holy  Scripture  when  as- 
sembled for  worship ;  at  a  time  when  his  memory 


WITNESSED    OF   THE  SECOND   CENTURY,      II9 

was  fresh  and  vivid  ;  when  there  were  men  yet  liv  ing 
who  had  seen  and  conversed  with  John's  disciples,  — 
in  this  church  would  John's  own  successor,  who  was 
born  near  to  his  times,  know  what  he  was  doing 
when  he  studied  the  fourth  Gospel  as  the  record 
direct  from  the  hand  of  the  beloved  disciple  ?  ^ 

Follow  another  line  of  tradition  remote  from  Ephe- 
sus,  but  leading  up  directly  to  the  same  source.  We 
have  named  Clement  of  Alexandria  in  Egypt.  Who 
and  what  was  Clement .?  If  we  place  ourselves  in 
that  seat  of  culture,  philosophy,  and  learning  we  may 
be  able  to  appreciate  his  word  and  testimony.  Here 
at  Alexandria  was  a  Christian  church  which  dated 
from  the  times  of  the  Apostles,  founded,  tradition 
says,  by  Mark  the  evangelist,  and  destined  to  exert  a 
wide  and  plastic  power  over  the  opinions  of  Christen- 
dom, indeed,  to  furnish  the  moulds  in  which  its 
theology  was  to  be  shaped  for  eighteen  centuries. 
Here,  too,  was  a  theological  school  where  teachers 
of  the  keenest  insight,  of  the  most  affluent  learning, 
enlarged  both  by  study  and  travel,  and  of  the  warm- 
est Christian  devotion,  prepared  their  scholars  for 
their  future  work.  Three  of  these  men  come  within 
the  second  century,  and,  viewed  in  succession,  they 

1  That  Poly  crates  includes  the  Gospel  of  John  when  he  says  he 
Btudied  "  the  whole  of  the  sacred  Scriptures,"  is  the  inevitable  in- 
ference from  the  fact  that  he  not  only  refers  to  John  as  authority  in 
the  controversy  about  Easter,  but  refers  to  John  xiii.  25,  and  xxi.  20, 
where  he  is  described  as  "  he  who  leaned  on  the  Lord's  breast."— 
Busehius,  H.  E.,  L.  v.  c.  24. 


120  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

extend  nearly  through  the  latter  half  of  it  in  a  con  • 
tinuous  line  of  light,  brilliant  yet  mildly  beautiful. 
Fifteen  years  of  the  life  of  Origen  falls  within  this 
period.  They  were  years  of  youth  and  childhood, 
but  such  childhood  as  might  well  be  called  the  father- 
hood of  the  man,  for  they  controlled  and  directed 
the  man  that  was  to  be.  He  was  born  and  nurtured 
in  a  Christian  home.  Leonides,  his  father,  made  the 
boy  commit  daily  portions  of  Scripture  to  memory. 
It  was  no  irksome  lesson,  but  the  boy's  untasked  and 
inexpressible  delight.  The  questions  he  asked  were 
beyond  his  years  and  beyond  the  father's  scope  alto- 
gether, but  the  father  so  rejoiced  and  thanked  God 
for  this  early  promise,  that  he  would  kiss  the  boy's 
breast  when  asleep  as  the  temple  where  the  Holy 
Spirit  was  preparing  to  dwell.  The  fourth  Gospel 
became  Origen's  special  study,  and  the  theology  of 
the  Proem  was  with  him  not  only  the  prime  moving 
power  of  Christianity,  but  it  explained  and  unitized 
the  whole  system  of  the  universe.  As  yet,  however, 
it  had  not  opened  upon  him  thus  grandly,  for  he  says 
that  in  his  youth  he  only  knew  the  Logos  according 
to  the  flesh.  We  see  him  as  yet  only  in  his  boyhood, 
committing  to  memory  the  Christian  Scriptures  with 
:he  keenest  relish  under  the  guidance  of  a  pious 
father.  Who  was  this  Leonides  who  at  the  year  185 
had  a  son  born  in  his  family  whose  mind  opened  with 
such  brilliant  promise }  He  was  a  man  of  unusual 
gifts,  and  of  marked  intelligence ;  probably  a  rheto- 


WITNESSES  OF  THE   SECOND   CENTURY.       121 

rician,  and  withal  so  imbued  with  the  ideas  and  the 
spirit  of  the  four  Gospels  which  he  taus^ht  to  his  chil- 
dren that  a  few  years  later  he  suffered  martyrdom 
for  the  love  of  Christ.  He  had  a  wife  and  six  other 
children  besides  Origen.  When  the  father  was 
thrown  into  prison,  the  boy  wrote  to  him  :  "  See 
thou  change  not  thy  mind  on  our  account."  He 
did  not  change,  but  cheerfully  and  nobly  died.  His 
property  was  confiscated,  his  wife  left  a  helpless 
widow,  and  his  seven  children  distributed  among  the 
Christian  families  of  Alexandria  as  a  martyr's  legacy. 
What  a  picture  of  Christian  domestic  life  in  the  last 
half  of  the  first  century,  and  of  the  power  of  the 
Christian  Scriptures  as  then  used  in  families  !  The 
birth  and  education  of  this  pious  Leonides  must  have 
been  some  twenty-five  years  earlier,  and  they  carry 
us  up  well-nigh  towards  the  middle  of  the  century.^ 

Origen  was  the  pupil  of  Clement,  whom  in  the  last 
decade  of  the  century  we  find  at  the  head  of  the  the- 
ological school  at  Alexandria.  How  much  Origen 
owed  to  his  master  we  do  not  know  ;  only  it  is  certain 
that  Clement,  too,  dehghted  supremely  in  the  fourth 
Gospel,  and  found  in  it  the  central  glory  of  Divine 
revelation.  "  The  Logos "  which  was  in  the  begin- 
ning with  God,  "by  which  all  things  were  made,"  and 
"  which  now  has  taken  the  name  of  Christ,"  is  called 
by  him  a  New  Song.  This  Logos  is  *'  the  Sun  of  the 
Soul,"  its  informing  and  indwelling  light,  the  inspirer 

1  Eusebius,  //.  E.,  vi.  2. 


r22  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

of  all  the  truth  to  be  found  in  the  old  philosophies, 
the  guide  of  the  Christian  not  only  because  it  has 
become  incarnate,  but  because  its  inward  shinings 
bring  the  disciple  to  behold  its  glory  in  the  face  of 
Jesus  Christ.  He  quotes  largely  from  the  other 
Scriptures,  but  the  fourth  Gospel  with  him  is  the 
heart  of  Christianity,  and  his  thought,  though  ex- 
pressed more  crudely  and  irregularly  than  that  of 
Origen,  is  precisely  in  the  same  line  of  development, 
and  shows  that  the  leading  idea  of  the  teacher  lived 
and  glowed  in  the  mind  of  his  pupil. 

Clement  not  only  quotes  the  same  Gospels  which 
we  possess,  but  assures  us  that  they  were  handed 
down  to  the  churches  of  his  day  in  unbroken  line  ; 
he  gives  abridged  accounts  of  all  the  canonical 
Scriptures,  and  particularly  one  pertaining  to  the 
composition  of  the  four  Gospels  "  received  from  the 
oldest  presbyters."  ^ 

It  becomes  a  very  interesting  question,  who  in  turn 
was  the  teacher  of  Clement,  and  who  introduced  him 
to  this  intimate  knowledge  of  Christianity  and  the 
Christian  Scriptures  ?  Happily,  he  has  told  us  in 
the  language  of  enthusiastic  admiration,  and  this  car- 
ries us  back  one  step  further  towards  the  middle  of 
the  second  century.  The  predecessor  of  Clement  in 
the  theological  school  at  Alexandria  was  Pantaenus, 
who  left  a  name  behind  him  not  only  distinguished 
foi  learning,  but  fragrant  with  the  Christian  graces 

1  Eusebius,  E.  E.,  vi.  14  . 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      123 

and  virtues.  Disciplined  in  the  Greek  schools  of 
philosophy,  but  fired  with  zeal  respecting  the  di- 
vine Word,  he  preserved  "the  salutary  doctrine  as 
given  by  Peter  and  James  and  John  and  Paul." 
Clement  found  Pantaenus  in  great  eminence  at  Alex- 
andria presiding  over  its  theological  school.  He  had 
wandered  over  the  earth  hungry  for  the  true  doc- 
trine ;  he  had  found  teachers  from  Greece,  from  It- 
aly, and  from  Syria,  but  not  till  he  found  Pantaenus 
was  his  hunger  satisfied.  "  He  was  in  truth,"  says 
Clement,  "  a  Sicilian  bee,  who,  cropping  the  flowers 
of  the  prophetic  and  apostolic  meadow,  caused  a  pure 
knowledge  to  grow  up  in  the  minds  of  his  hearers." 
The  prophetic  and  apostolic  meadow,  whose  flowers 
Pantaenus  gathered  and  charmed  his  hearers  withal, 
was  evidently  none  other  than  the  Old  and  New  Tes- 
taments which  he  expounded  to  his  pupils;  which 
Clement  expounded  in  turn  after  him,  and  which 
Origen  in  turn  expounded  after  him,  and  edited  in 
his  famous  "  Hexapla,"  fragments  of  which  have 
come  down  to  us,  and  which  was  one  of  the  greatest 
achievements  of  learning  in  ancient  times. 

But  who  preceded  Pantaenus  in  this  same  theologi- 
cal school }  We  do  not  know.  But  we  are  told  by 
Eusebius  that  it  had  been  estabHshed  at  Alexandria 
from  ancient  times,  and  had  a  reputation  for  teachers 
"able  in  eloquence  and  the  study  of  divine  things."  ^ 

The  "  ancient  times  "  of  the  age  of  Pantaenus  carry 

1  Eusebius,  H.  E-,  v.  10. 


124  ^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

US  across  the  middle  of  the  century  and  up  towards 
its  beginning.  They  bring  us  near  or  into  the  times 
of  the  beloved  disciple  himself. 

Skeptical  modern  criticism  has  assumed  that  the 
fourth  Gospel  was  forged  by  some  unknown  writer  in 
the  last  half  of  the  second  century.  We  ask  our 
readers  here  to  sum  up  the  facts  we  have  given,  that 
at  or  near  the  time  when  we  are  told  it  was  thus 
fabricated,  it  was  universally  read  as  Holy  Scripture 
in  the  churches,  dotting  the  Roman  Empire  from  the 
Euphrates  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  and  from  the  British 
Channel  to  the  African  desert ;  and  last,  not  least, 
that  it  was  expounded  in  a  theological  school  which 
could  boast  of  teachers  imbued  with  all  the  learning 
and  philosophy  of  the  times,  with  minds  enriched  by 
travel  and  the  study  of  God's  Word  ;  whose  special 
and  chosen  work  was  historical  investigation ;  who 
delighted  in  John's  Gospel  as  the  very  heart  of  Chris- 
tianity and  of  all  divine  revelation  ;  whose  succession 
uf  teachers  ran  up  in  continuous  line  near  or  into  the 
days  of  the  Apostle  himself ;  who  preserved  the  ac- 
counts of  old  men  who  told  them  how  and  when  it 
was  composed  ;  who  gloried  so  much  in  its  doctrines 
that  they  declared  them  in  the  face  of  death  ;  and 
after  all  this  same  fourth  Gospel  was  then  a  new  work 
foisted  surreptitiously  upon  the  Christian  public,  re- 
ceived universally  and  suddenly  like  a  flash  of  light- 
ning, and  without  a  breath  of  controversy,  while  the 
churches  that  received  it,  the  bishops  that  read  it  in 


WITAr ESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      125 

the  assemblies,  the  famiUes  where  the  children  com- 
mitted it  to  memory,  and  the  learned  theological 
school  that  expounded  it,  were  all  innocent  as  babes 
of  any  knowledge  respecting  its  origin !  Such  are 
the  reasonings  of  skepticism.  It  might  just  as  well 
cut  the  threads  of  history  from  behind  us  every  hour, 
and  make  the  world  of  yesterday  and  the  world  of 
to-day  disjointed  fragments  that  float  at  random  in 
the  river  of  years  ! 

We  have  followed  the  converging  lines  of  tradition 
from  Lyons  in  Gaul,  from  Ephesus  in  Asia  Minor, 
and  from  Alexandria  in  Egypt.  We  might  go  to 
Carthage  in  Northern  Africa,  and  cite  TertuUian 
with  a  like  result.  But  let  us  go  east  to  Jerusalem, 
where  a  church  existed  from  the  beginning,  amid 
the  scene  of  the  Saviour's  life,  death,  and  resurrec- 
tion, and  whose  first  bishop  was  one  of  the  twelve,  — 
the  Apostle  James.  Placing  ourselves  at  the  close 
of  the  second  century,  what  do  we  find  }  The  metro- 
politan churches,  especially  those  founded  by  Apos- 
tles, very  carefully  preserved  the  names  in  succession 
of  their  bishops  inscribed  on  tablets  and  laid  up  in 
their  archives.  These  were  diligently  examined  by 
Eusebius,  and  he  enumerates  in  his  history  the 
names  of  all  the  bishops  of  the  Church  at  Jerusalem, 
from  the  close  of  the  second  century  up  to  the  Apos- 
tle James  himself.  A  fact  like  this  goes  to  show  that 
tradition,  with  these  churches,  was  not  so  loose  and 
floating  as  is  sometimes  supposed,  especially  when  it 


126  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

pertained  to  things  held  dear  and  sacred  hke  their 
canonical  books  and  consecrated  names.  Moreover 
Jerusalem  was  the  resort  of  Christian  pilgrims  as 
early  as  the  close  of  the  second  century ;  and  yet  ear- 
lier it  is  more  than  probable,  and  while  disciples  were 
yet  living  who  sat  at  the  Apostles'  feet  and  heard  their 
story.  Thither  they  went  to  see  with  their  own  eyes 
the  places  trodden  by  the  Redeemer's  feet,  and  to  gain 
knowledge  of  the  localities  referred  to  in  the  New 
Testament,  that  they  might  read  it  with  better  under- 
standing.^ It  is  easy  to  conceive  with  what  avidity 
a  teacher  who  expounded  the  New  Testament  would 
seek  the  geography  of  Palestine,  and  read  it  as  a  liv- 
ing book.  Thither  went  Clement  of  Alexandria ; 
and  we  find  him  there  just  after  the  close  of  the 
second  century.  Whom  did  he  meet  at  Jerusalem  .' 
He  met  Alexander,  bishop  of  the  church  there,  be- 
tween 193  and  211,  who  has  told  us  of  Clement's 
visit  in  episcopal  letters,  fragments  of  which  Euse- 
bius  has  preserved.  In  one  of  these  letters  Alexan- 
der speaks  of  Clement  as  "  the  blessed  presbyter,  a 
man  endued  with  all  virtue  and  well  approved,  who 
coming  hither  by  the  providence  and  superinten- 
dence of  the  Lord,  has  confirmed  and  increased  the 
Church  of  God."  ^ 

But  there  was  another  man  whom  Clement  met 
also  at  Jerusalem.     Alexander  was  not  sole  bishop^ 

1  Neander's  Church  History,  Torrey's  edition,  vol.  i.  p.  691. 
s  H.E.,v\.  II. 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND  CENTURY.      12; 

but  colleague  with  the  venerable  patriarch,  Narcis- 
sus, who  had  held  the  Episcopate  of  Jerusalem  for 
about  twenty  years.  His  name  breathed  the  odors 
of  piety  down  even  to  the  times  of  Eusebius.  He 
lived  to  an  extreme  age.  Alexander  says  in  one 
of  his  episcopal  letters,  "  Narcissus  salutes  you,  the 
same  who  was  bishop  here  before  me,  and  is  now 
colleague  with  me  in  prayers,  being  now  advanced  to 
his  hundred  and  tenth  year,  and  who  with  me  exhorts 
you  to  be  of  one  mind."  ^  This  was  in  211.  Here 
was  a  man  whose  life  spanned  almost  the  whole  of 
the  second  century  ;  whose  scene  of  active  labor  and 
care  was  the  very  place  where  Jesus  taught,  died, 
and  rose  again ;  who  must  have  been  familiar  with 
many  who  had  seen  and  heard  the  Apostles  ;  who 
lived  when  the  fourth  Gospel  was  read  in  his  church 
and  in  all  Christendom,  as  holy  Scripture,  and  who 
began  to  live  when  the  man  whose  name  the  fourth 
Gospel  bears  went  to  his  earthly  rest.  His  life  fills 
up  the  whole  space  between  John  and  Clement,  with 
not  more  than  the  gap  of  a  single  year,  and  probably 
not  even  that.  He  must  have  known  familiarly 
scores  of  persons  who  knew  John  before  he  left 
Jerusalem  for  his  charge  at  Ephesus.  This  man, 
Clement  communed  with  at  Jerusalem.  We  can  un- 
derstand how  much  his  language  signifies  when  he 
gcives  us  traditions  about  the  four  Gospels  "  received 
from  aged  presbyters."  The  assumption  that  John's 
1  H.  E.,v\.  II. 


128  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Gospel  first  saw  the  light  after  the  year  15c,  or  during 
the  second  century  even,  becomes,  if  possible,  stiF 
more  absurd. 

We  ascend  the  stream.  We  come  into  the  third 
quarter  of  the  second  century.  We  can  hardly  say 
that  the  historical  evidence  grows  stronger  as  we 
ascend,  which  were  scarcely  possible,  but  it  thickens 
and  becomes  multiform. 

And  here  at  the  opening  of  this  quarter  we  meet 
with  a  professed  canon  of  Scripture  carefully  ar^ 
ranged.  We  find  a  list  of  canonical  books  dating 
from  about  170,  discovered  by  Muratori,  and  proba- 
bly written  at  Rome,  and  in  this  list,  Matthew,  Mark, 
Luke,  and  John,  stand  in  the  order  as  we  have  them 
now,  and  as  they  had  then  been  universally  adopted. 

The  four  Gospels  were  originally  composed  and 
published  in  the  Greek  language ;  that  of  Matthew 
being  possibly,  though  not  certainly,  an  exception. 
It  was  the  vernacular  speech  of  many  provinces  of 
the  Roman  Empire.  It  had  been  diffused  through- 
out the  East  by  the  conquests  of  Alexander.  The 
Old  Testament  had  long  been  popularly  used  in  a 
Greek  version.  Greek  was  the  language  of  scholars  ; 
it  was  to  a  large  extent  the  language  of  commerce, 
and  it  was  preeminently  adapted  to  clothe  the  ideas  of 
the  New  Testament  and  depict  the  doctrines  of  Chris- 
tianity  in  their  minutest  and  most  delicate  shadings. 

But  Christianity  soon  transcended  the  bounds  of 
Greek  culture,  and  it  became  necessary  that  the  New 


WITNESSES  OF   THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      1 29 

Testament  should  be  rendered  into  other  tongues. 
Of  course  it  would  be  translated  very  early  into  the 
language  of  Rome,  which  was  spoken  throughout  the 
West.  It  would  be  translated  into  Syriac,  which  was 
spoken  in  the  East.  Accordingly  we  have  a  Syriac 
version  called  the  Peschito,  generally  acknowledged 
on  good  evidence  to  have  been  made  before  the  close 
of  the  second  century ;  and  we  have  a  Latin  version 
well  known  under  the  Itala,  made  still  earlier  ;  for 
Tertullian  used  it,  as  is  known  by  his  quotations,  and 
the  Latin  translator  of  Irenaeus'  great  work  against 
heresies  also  followed  it.  These  translations  both 
contain  the  four  Gospels  substantially  as  they  have 
come  down  to  us.  Here  then  is  the  important  fact. 
The  four  Gospels  before  the  close  of  the  century, 
were  held  as  preeminent  authority,  and  translated 
into  other  tongues  to  be  quoted  and  used  as  such  in 
other  communities.  But  suppose  we  had  the  very 
Greek  text  from  which  these  translations  were  made, 
we  should  then  be  carried  back  still  farther  towards 
the  beginning.  Well,  that  very  text  has  lately  been 
found.  We  have  in  the  lately  discovered  "  Codex 
Siniaticus,"  the  identical  Greek  text  out  of  which 
those  translations  must  have  been  made,  for  the 
"various  readings"  of  the  latter  are  found  in  the 
former,  and  correspond  thereto.  This  carries  us  back 
inevitably  to  the  year  150,  and  shows  that  a  Canon 
of  Scripture  was  then  firmly  established.  All  the 
theories  recently  blown  up,  assuming  the  later  origin 
of  the  fourth  Gospel,  vanish  like  bubbles  that  break 

9 


I30  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

in  air.  We  shall  see  by  and  by  that  we  are  carried 
back  by  these  ancient  documents,  not  only  to  the 
middle  of  the  century,  but  past  it,  and  up  to  its  very 
beginning. 

Not  only  translations,  but  harmonies  of  the  four  Gos- 
pels were  made  during  this  period,  in  which  the  fourth 
Gospel  was  included,  and  this  forms  an  independent 
and  most  conclusive  ground  of  evidence.  The  city 
of  Antioch,  the  capital  of  Syria,  received  Chris- 
tianity from  the  hands  of  the  Apostles  themselves. 
Here  in  the  year  i68,  we  find  Theophilus,  bishop  of 
the  church  in  that  city.  Only  five  pastorates  had 
preceded  him  in  that  church,  since  the  times  of  Paul 
and  Barnabas,  who  started  from  Antioch  on  their 
missionary  journey.  It  was  in  the  vicinity  of  Jeru- 
salem and  in  frequent  communication  with  it,  and  its 
bishop  must  have  known  familiarly  many  who  saw 
and  heard  the  personal  disciples  of  Jesus.  Theophi- 
lus wrote  several  works,  which  were  extant  in  the 
times  of  Eusebius,  who  describes  them.  In  one  of 
these  he  names  John's  Gospel  as  a  part  of  the  Holy 
Scriptures,  and  John  himself  as  a  writer  guided  by 
the  Holy  Spirit.  But  more  than  this,  Theophilus 
wrote  a  commentary  on  the  Gospels,  including  John, 
showing  not  only  the  estimation  in  which  he  held 
them  himself,  but  in  which  they  were  held  by  the 
churches  themselves.  His  testimony  is  that  of  the 
Christian  communities  separated  by  only  a  single 
generation  from  those  who  had  consorted  with  the 
Apostles,  and  received  the  Gospel  from  their  lips. 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      13I 

Contemporary  with  Theophilus  was  Tatian,  who 
flourished  as  early  as  150,  a  disciple  of  Justin  Martyr, 
one  therefore,  who  learned  Christianity  of  a  teacher 
whose  life  began  in  the  first  century,  and  was  two 
years  a  contemporary  with  John.  Tatian  relapsed 
into  Gnosticism,  but  he  wrote  an  exegetical  harmony 
of  the  four  Gospels,  including  the  book  of  John, 
which  he  quotes,  and  which  also  was  extant  in  the 
times  of  Eusebius.  His  testim.ony  also  is  that  of 
his  times,  showing  incontestably  that  in  the  middle 
of  the  second  century  the  four  Gospels  belonged  to 
the  Cmion  of  Scripi7ire,  so  universally  received  in  the 
churches  that  they  were  translated  and  expounded 
even  as  now,  as  the  rule  of  faith  and  of  life.  How 
long  must  they  have  existed  to  have  acquired,  by  the 
year  150,  this  universal  and  undisputed  authority  in 
the  churches,  East  and  West,  from  the  Euphrates 
to  the  Rhine,  and  from  the  English  Channel  to  the 
deserts  of  Africa  ?  That  commentaries  were  writ- 
ten upon  the  four  Gospels,  and  harmonies  made  of 
them,  and  that  they  were  bound  together  as  a  sepa- 
rate and  exclusive  whole,  is  a  fact  of  weightier  sig- 
nificance even  than  individual  citations.  "These 
enterprises,"  says  Tischendorf,  "  fall  soon  after  the 
middle  of  the  second  century,  and  consequently  we 
must  assume  that  the  use  and  acknowledgment  of 
all  four  Evangelists,  in  a  far  earlier  period,  is  fully 
determined."  ^ 

*  Weim  wurJen  uusere  Evan^^eliett  vcrfasst?  pp.  ri,  12. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   WITNESSES    OF   THE   SECOND    CENTURY- 

OTILL  we  ascend  the  stream.  We  come  into  the 
*^  first  half  of  the  second  century  and  among  a 
generation,  many  of  whom  were  contemporaries  of 
the  Apostles  or  of  their  companions,  and  co-labor- 
ers. Here  we  find  the  historical  evidence  coursing 
through  various  channels,  yet  converging  to  its  single 
source. 

I.  The  first  class  of  men  whom  we  meet  here  are 
those  Christian  fathers  in  full  reception  of  the  faith 
of  the  Church,  whose  vigorous  manhood  falls  within 
the  second  century,  but  who  were  born  before  the 
close  of  the  first,  and  whose  childhood  therefore  was 
contemporary  with  the  later  Apostles  and  their  com- 
panions. Some  of  them  had  seen  the  last  of  the 
Apostles  and  hung  upon  his  speech.  All  of  them 
belonged  to  a  period  when  tradition  was  fresh,  fre- 
quent, and  direct ;  when  the  minds  of  new  converts 
were  eager  and  inquisitive,  and  when  the  times  of 
Christ,  and  the  scene  through  which  He  moved,  must 
have  been  produced  in  their  minds  with  most  vivid 
and  uncoloring  sunlight. 

First,  we  meet  with  Justin  Martyr,  the  teacher  of 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      1 33 

Tatian.  Justin  was  born  not  far  from  a.  d.  100.  He 
was  a  native  of  Shechem,  in  Samaria,  the  Sychar  of 
the  New  Testament.  He  was  not  born,  however,  in 
a  Christian  family,  and  knew  nothing  of  Christianity 
till  his  early  manhood.  Then  in  his  hunger  for  di- 
vine knowledge,  he  met  a  serene  old  man,  of  aspect 
gi'ave  and  meek,  who  directed  him  to  Jesus  Christ 
and  the  Hebrew  prophets.  He  had  witnessed  the 
tranquillity  of  the  martyrs  and  their  triumph  over 
torture  and  death.  He  became  a  convert  to  Chris- 
tianity. How  genuine  his  conversion  was  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  he  pubUcly  defended  it  in  his  Apolo- 
gies, when  he  clearly  foresaw  that  the  defense  would 
cost  him  his  life. 

His  pupil  Tatian  called  him  "  a  most  wonderful 
man."  Judged  by  the  standard  of  his  own  times,  his 
acquirements  were  remarkable,  and  by  the  standard 
of  any  times  his  moral  greatness  and  Christian  hero- 
ism are  worthy  of  warm  admiration.  He  is  an  im- 
portant and  most  unexceptionable  witness  to  the  four 
Gospels,  not  only  as  to  how  they  were  regarded  by 
himself,  but  how  they  were  received  and  held  in  all 
the  churches  of  his  day.  He  gives  us  an  interesting 
and  somewhat  graphical  view  of  these  churches  as- 
sembled for  worship  :  "  On  the  day  which  is  called 
Sunday  we  all,  whether  dwelling  in  the  cities  or  in 
the  country,  assemble  together,  when  the  memoirs  by 
the  Apostles,  or  the  writings  of  the  prophets,  are  read 
as  long  as  time  permits."     Again,  he  characterizes 


134  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

these  memoirs  as  written  by  "  the  Apostles  and  their 
companions,"  thus  clearly  designating  the  synoptics 
and  the  fourth  Gospel.  He  quotes  them  so  much 
and  so  familiarly  as  to  show  that  his  mind  was  im- 
bued with  their  spirit,  and  that  their  language  flowed 
spontaneously  from  his  pen  ;  and  the  main  facts 
could  be  reproduced,  says  Mr.  Norton,  from  Justin's 
writings  alone,  and  the  passages  referred  to  the  places 
from  which  they  were  severally  drawn.  But  the  evi- 
dence in  respect  to  the  fourth  Gospel  is  very  striking 
and  doubly  significant.  Justin  delighted  in  the  Jo- 
hannean  theology.  It  colored  his  whole  mind,  and 
thence  flowed  into  his  speech.  "  The  making  over 
of  the  Logos  to  Christ,"  says  Tischendorf,  "  is  a  de- 
duction from  John  in  many  passages  of  Justin,  of 
which  no  trace  in  the  synoptics  nor  in  the  oldest  par- 
allel writings  ever  occurs  to  us.  So,  too,  the  answer 
of  the  Baptist  to  the  inquiring  messengers  of  the 
Jews  is  given  by  Justin  word  for  word  as  only  John 
reports  it ;  as  also  he  gives  the  very  searching  pas- 
sage respecting  the  second  birth,"  found  only  in  John 
iii.  3.  These  citations  compel  those  who  deny  the 
genuineness  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  to  take  refuge  in 
the  theory  of  a  lost  writing  which  contained  a  passage 
as  it  stands  in  John.  This  is  the  desperate  shift 
of  the  skeptical  criticism.  To  measure  its  enormous 
absurdity  requires  but  a  moment's  reflection.  Jus- 
tin's first  Apology  was  pubUshed  a.  d.  138,  in  which 
he  says  the  Gospels  are  read  in  the  churches  in  city 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      135 

and  country  with  the  prophets  ;  read,  that  is,  as  Holy 
Scripture.  These  were  the  Gospels  as  he  quoted 
them,  —  memoirs  of  Christ  written  by  Apostles  and 
their  companions,  including,  therefore,  the  book  of 
John  as  he  knew  it.  Twelve  years  later,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  four  Gospels,  as  zve  have  them,  were  read  in 
all  the  churches  east  and  west,  in  Syria,  in  Rome,  and 
in  Africa,  and  one  of  yustiris  own  pupils  had  made 
a  harmony  of  them  which  was  extant  in  the  times 
of  Eusebius.  These  critics  then  would  have  us 
believe  that  within  this  interval  of  twelve  years,  one 
book  of  John  dropped  out  of  use  all  over  Christen- 
dom, covering  now  its  thousands  of  square  miles, 
and  including  its  peoples  of  various  tongues  ;  and 
a  new  and  spurious  book  of  John  went  into  its 
place,  simultaneously  and  universally,  and  with  the 
silence  of  night,  as  not  a  lisp  of  controversy  was 
ever  heard  about  it.  This,  too,  during  the  lifetime 
of  Justin, — for  he  lived  and  wrote  past  the  middle 
of  the  century,  and  when  men  were  giving  up  their 
lives  for  the  ideas  which  these  books  embodied 
as  the  Rule  of  Faith.  It  has  been  said  that  the 
science  of  historical  criticism  was  not  understood 
by  these  people.  We  shall  see.  But  granting  they 
had  not  the  keenness  of  critics  they  certainly  were 
not  fools. 

We  come  next  to  a  very  important  witness,  who  is 
always  named  as  "  the  blessed  Polycarp."  We  have 
already  referred  to  him  in  connection  with   Irenaeus 


136  THE   FOUK  TJI  GOSPEL. 

his  pupil,  but  he  is  too  important  a  witness,  not  to  be 
evoked  in  his  own  name.  He  not  only  lived  through 
his  youth  and  younger  manhood  in  intimate  and 
loving  intercourse  with  John,  and  other  Apostles  and 
disciples  who  had  seen  and  heard  the  Lord  Jesus, 
but  he  was  installed  as  bishop  over  one  of  the  con- 
stellated churches  —  the  church  at  Smyrna,  near 
Ephesus  —  by  apostolic  hands.  The  mantle  of  the 
beloved  disciple  fell  gracefully  upon  him.  The  sweet- 
ness and  benignity  of  spirit  largely  imbreathed  on 
the  bosom  of  Jesus,  exhaled  in  its  benignity  and 
gentleness  around  "the  blessed  Polycarp."  The 
same  influence  inspired  him  with  the  intrepidity 
of  Christian  heroism.  It  will  be  readily  under- 
stood how  by  his  intercourse  with  John,  not  merely 
the  contents  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  but  also  some 
of  "  the  many  other  things "  which  Jesus  did  and 
said,  and  which  "  are  not  written  in  this  book," 
entered  largely  into  the  memory  and  the  very  being 
of  Polycarp,  and  that  he  would  preach  Christ  to  his 
flock,  not  so  much  from  written  documents  as  from 
this  living  gospel  in  his  soul.  This  indeed  was  the 
case.  It  is  plain,  from  the  account  of  Irenaeus  who 
heard  him,  that  this  was  the  burden  of  his  discourse 
and  conversation  with  the  people  whom  he  drew 
around  him  ;  and  so  vividly  did  he  reproduce  to  them 
the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus,  "his  miracles  and 
doctrine,"  as  he  had  "  received  them  from  the  eye- 
witnesses," that  the  picture  of  the  man,  and  the  room 


WI7WESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      137 

where  they  met,  Hved  afterward  in  the  memory  with 
unwonted  brightness,  —  "  the  place  where  he  sat,  his 
bodily  form,  his  entrances  and  walks,  and  the  com- 
plexion of  his  life."  Long  afterwards  Polycarp  was 
quoted  as  a  kind  of  living  Bible,  to  show  what  Jesus 
would  have  said  and  taught.  Irenaeus  cites  him  in 
his  controversy  with  the  Gnostics  as  "  a  man  w^ho  had 
been  instructed  by  the  Apostles,  and  had  familiar 
intercourse  with  many  who  had  seen  Christ,  and  had 
also  been  appointed  bishop  by  the  Apostles  in  Asia, 
in  the  church  at  Smyrna ;  whom  we  also  have  seen 
in  our  youth,  for  he  lived  a  long  time  and  to  a  very 
advanced  age,  when  after  a  glorious  and  most  dis- 
tinguished martyrdom  he  departed  this  life.  He  al- 
ways taught  what  he  had  learned  from  the  Apostles, 
what  the  church  had  handed  down,  and  what  is  the 
only  true  doctrine.  All  the  churches  bear  witness  to 
these  things,  and  those  that  have  been  successors  to 
Polycarp  to  the  present  time,  a  witness  of  the  truth 
much  more  worthy  of  credit,  and  much  more  certain 
than  either  Valentine  or  Marcion,  or  the  rest  of  those 
perverse  teachers."  ^ 

Polycarp  suffered  martyrdom  at  Smyrna  a.  d.  167, 
being  then  eighty-six  years  old,  as  already  stated. 
We  have  a  full  and  detailed  description  of  his  suffer- 
ings in  a  letter  from  his  church  at  Smyrna  to  the 
churches  in  Pontus,  and  which  Eusebius  mostly  pre- 
serves. It  is  written  by  eye-witnesses,  and  describes 
1  Eusebius,  II.  E.,  iv.  14. 


138  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  heavenly  bearing  of  the  venerable  martyr,  "  filled 
with  confidence  and  joy,  and  his  countenance  bright- 
ened with  grace."  ^ 

A  single  writing  of  Polycarp  has  come  down  to 
o..,  —  his  letter  to  the  church  at  Philippi.  It  is  writ- 
ten with  unction  and  dignity,  and  is  worthy  of  its 
author's  fame.  It  affords  evidence  moreover  the 
niost  full  and  pointed,  that  when  it  was  written  there 
'w.^s  a  canon  of  Scripture  corresponding  to  our  own, 
'svdl  known  and  established  in  the  churches.  He 
quo'-.es  the  New  Testament  again  and  again.  He 
quotes  Paul's  Epistles  by  name,  and  quotes  them  as 
canonical.  "  Do  we  not  know,  he  says,  that  *  the 
saints  shall  judge  the  world '  as  Paul  teaches } " 
Again,  "  I  trust  ye  are  well  versed  in  the  Sacred 
Scriptures,  and  that  nothing  is  hid  from  you.  It  is 
declared  in  these  Scriptures,  '  Be  ye  angry  and  sin  not,* 
and  '■  Let  not  the  sun  go  down  upon  your  wrath.' " 
But  what  is  directly  and  forcibly  to  our  purpose,  he 
quotes  the  first  epistle  of  John  expressly  to  refute  the 
GfiosticSy  showing  not  only  that  it  was  then  in  the 
canon,  but  also  how  John  himself  understood  and  ap- 
plied it.  Referring  to  those  "false  brethren,"  who 
"in  hypocrisy  bear  the  name  of  the  Lord  and  draw 
away  vain  men  into  error,"  he  says,  "  Whosoever 
does  not  confess  that  Jesus  Christ  is  come  in  the 
flesh  is  antichrist  (i  John  iv.  3)  ;  and  whosoever  does 

1   It  was  evidently  interpolated  by  later  hands,  but  its  main  fact* 
are  regarded  as  authentic. 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY,      1 39 

not  confess  the  testimony  of  the  cross  is  of  the 
devil,  and  whosoever  perverts  the  oracles  of  the 
Lord  to  his  own  lusts,  and  says  that  there  is  neither 
a  resurrection  nor  a  judgment,  is  the  first-born  of 
Satan."  Every  sentence  here  sharply  distinguishes 
the  Gnostic  heresy.  The  disciple  of  John  quotes  him 
to  rebuke  this  haunting  and  hated  error.  That  the 
same  hand  wrote  the  Catholic  Epistle,  and  the  fourth 
Gospel,  is  to  our  minds  an  undoubting  conviction,  and 
proof  for  the  genuineness  of  one  is  good  for  both. 

But  Polycarp  nowhere  quotes  the  fourth  Gospel, 
and  for  obvious  reasons.  His  intercourse  with  John 
took  place  probably  before  the  fourth  Gospel  was 
published,  and  before  that  time  he  was  not  only  pos- 
sessed with  its  contents,  but  the  life  of  Jesus,  in  am- 
pler scope  and  more  minute  detail,  filled  his  memory 
and  glowed  in  his  mind  and  heart.  It  is  well  known 
that  the  recital  of  the  events  in  the  life  of  Christ 
made  up  the  substance  of  the  preaching  of  some  of 
the  Apostles,  and  we  can  well  understand  with  what 
hunger  it  would  be  received,  and  how  fondly  it  would 
be  treasured  up. 

But  Polycarp  is  a  witness  to  the  fourth  Gospel,  in 
a  way  far  more  complete  and  satisfactory  than  a  few 
quotations  could  possibly  be.  Irenaeus  not  only 
quotes  it,  but  he  quotes  it  as  Holy  Scripture ;  and  we 
know  both  from  him  and  his  translator,  that  the  same 
work  which  has  come  down  to  us,  was  the  one  which 
he  had  in  his  hands.     But  Irenaeus  sat  at  Polycarp's 


140  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

feet  in  Smyrna,  heard  him  recount  the  narrative  and 
conversation  of  John  and  of  others  who  had  seen  the 
Lord,  the  "  discourses  "  of  Jesus,  "  his  miracles  and 
doctrine."  These,  he  says,  were  "in  consistency 
with  the  Holy  Scriptures  " ;  that  is,  with  the  fourth 
Gospel  which  he  held  in  his  hand,  and  which  we  have 
now.  The  fourth  Gospel  becomes  not  merely  the 
testimony  of  John.  It  is  as  if  a  whole  company  of 
eye-witnesses  rose  up  from  amidst  the  constellated 
churches  over  which  he  presided,  saying  over  again 
the  closing  adjuration  of  John's  Gospel,  "  this  is  the 
disciple  that  testifieth  of  these  things  and  wrote 
these  things,  and  we  know  that  his  testimony  is 
true." 

The  next  witness  is  Papias,  who  was  Bishop  of 
Hierapolis  in  Syria,  about  the  year  ii6.  He  was  a 
weak,  but  pious  and  learned  man.  He  wrote  a  work 
in  five  books  called  "  Interpretations  of  our  Lord's 
Declarations,"  which  Irenaeus  had  seen,  but  of  which 
Eusebius  evidently  had  only  seen  the  preface.  In 
the  fourth  book,  as  Irenaeus  read  it,  Papias  says  he 
was  an  associate  of  Polycarp  and  a  hearer  of  John. 
In  the  "  preface,"  as  Eusebius  quotes  it,  Papias  repre- 
sents himself  as  an  eager  and  inquisitive  hearer  of 
old  men  who  knew  the  Apostles,  and  reported  large- 
ly the  discourses  of  Jesus.  The  "  Interpretations  " 
were  evidently  expositions  of  these  traditional  say- 
ings. He  not  only  knew  the  Gospels  of  Matthew  and 
Mark,  but  tells  us  how  and  why  they  were  composed, 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      14I 

and  he  assures  us  that  he  had  this  account  of  them 
from  John  the  presbyter,  who  was  a  hearer  of  John 
the  Evangelist  and  other  Apostles.  Whenever  he 
met  with  any  of  these  old  men  who  had  sat  at  the 
Apostles'  feet,  he  made  it  a  point,  he  says,  to  inquire 
"  what  was  said  by  Andrew,  Peter,  or  Philip ;  what  by 
Thomas,  James,  John,  Matthew,  or  any  other  of  the 
disciples  of  the  Lord,  for  I  do  not  think  I  derived  so 
mmh  benefit  from  books  as  from  the  living  voice  of 
those  that  are  still  surviving^  He  does  not  quote 
the  Gospels,  and  he  does  not  mention  the  book  of 
John.  Nothing  seems  more  perfectly  natural.  Let 
us  place  ourselves  in  his  position  with  all  the  fresh 
awakened  interest  in  the  wonderful  events  which  had 
taken  place,  and  which  were  still  shaking  the  fabric 
of  society.  The  men  were  yet  alive  who  had  con- 
versed with  the  twelve  that  gathered  about  Jesus  in 
Palestine ;  old  men  like  Polycarp  and  John  the  Pres- 
byter, whose  memories  brooded  tenaciously  over  what 
they  had  heard,  and  whose  souls  were  ripening  for 
immortality  under  its  hallowing  sway.  How  eagerly 
and  fondly  should  we  have  turned  from  the  synopsis 
of  books  to  the  conversation  of  those  living  men  ! 
How  inquisitive  should  we  be  about  all  the  gossipy 
details  of  circumstance ;  how  Jesus  looked  and  how 
he  dressed  ;  what  were  all  his  private  haunts ;  what 
other  things  he  said  and  did ;  what  were  the  shin- 
inss  of  his  face  and  what  the  tones  of  his  voice ! 
This  is  precisely  what  Papias  evidently  did ;  and  he 


142  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

says  naively,  "  I  do  not  think  I  derived  so  much  ben- 
efit from  books."  He  may  have  referred  to  the  fourth 
Gospel  in  the  body  of  his  work,  for  we  have  only 
short  quotations  from  its  preface.  For  quite  obvious 
reasons,  however,  he  would  not  be  likely  to  do  so.  It 
was  then  fresh  and  recent,  and  in  the  hands  of  those 
that  knew  all  about  it  and  knew  John  himself  Not 
so  of  Matthew  and  Mark.  Their  books  were  already 
sixty  years  old,  and  had  become  ancient  documents, 
and  the  way  Papias  speaks  of  them,  shows  not  only 
that  they  were  well  known,  but  that  an  interest  at- 
tached to  them  as  sacred  writings,  and  that  how  and 
why  they  were  composed  were  questions  of  exceed- 
ing interest.  "  John  the  presbyter,  said  this.  Mark 
being  the  interpreter  of  Peter,  whatsoever  he  re- 
corded he  wrote  with  great  accuracy,  not  in  the 
order,  however,  in  which  it  was  spoken  and  done  by 
our  Lord."  Again,  "  Matthew  composed  his  history 
in  the  Hebrew  dialect,  and  every  one  translated  it  as 
he  could."  He  speaks  of  these  precisely  as  of  writ- 
ings which  had  become  venerable  and  canonical. 
But  his  testimony  for  Matthew  and  Mark  is  good  for 
that  of  John  also.  How  preposterous  the  supposition 
that  the  churches  which  held  in  their  hands  the  very 
writings  of  the  Evangelists,  and  could  prove  them  as 
such  by  living  men,  and  the  very  details  of  their  com- 
position, would  throw  them  away  and  receive  in  their 
place  forged  or  second-hand  documents  ;  or  that  a 
spurious  Gospel  of  John  could  have  been  got  up  and 


WITNESSES   OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      1 43 

foisted  upon  the  churches  while  the  persons  could  be 
appealed  to  who  sat  at  his  feet !  Schenkel  fixes  the 
date  of  the  fourth  Gospel  in  the  times  of  Papias, 
about  the  year  1 20 :  that  is,  it  was  got  up  by  some 
forger,  while  hundreds  were  alive  who  had  seen  John 
and  drank  his  discourse  ;  while  the  writings  which 
came  from  an  apostle's  hand  were  matters  of  keen  in- 
terest and  inquiry  ;  while  John's  own  church  at  Ephe- 
sus  held  the  legacy  of  his  spoken  and  written  words 
as  sacred  treasures,  remembered  the  tones  of  his 
voice,  and  pointed  pilgrims  to  the  sepulchre  where 
he  slept. 

The  next  witness  to  the  canon  of  Scripture  is  the 
author  of  the  "  Letter  of  Barnabas,"  probably  the 
same  Barnabas  who  was  the  companion  of  Paul, 
though  this  is  not  entirely  certain,  and  is  not  essen- 
tial to  the  present  argument.  The  history  of  this  let- 
ter is  curious.  It  was  quoted  as  early  as  the  last 
decade  of  the  second  century  by  Clement,  and  quoted 
as  genuine  as  we  would  quote  one  of  Paul's  Epistles. 
It  was  quoted  afterwards  by  Origen,  and  as  the  work 
of  Barnabas.  It  disappeared,  and  was  wholly  un- 
known in  modern  times  till  about  1645,  when  it  was 
discovered,  and  an  edition  published  at  Paris.  It  was 
variously  regarded.  Some  thought  it  genuine,  some 
not.  Rosenmuller  received  it.  Mr.  Norton  rejected 
it.  But  thus  far  in  modern  times  it  was  only  known 
in  a  mutilated  copy,  partly  in  the  Greek  original,  and 
partly  in  an  old   Latin  translation,  and  a  very  bad 


144  THE  FOURTH   GOSPEL. 

one,  the  beginning  of  the  former  and  the  end  of  the 
latter  being  lost,  and  the  text  of  both  being  cor- 
rupt. Its  antiquity,  however,  was  indisputable,  and 
it  quoted  Matthew's  Gospel  as  Holy  Scripture,  under 
the  formula  " as  it  is  written','  under  which  only  can- 
onical Scripture  was  ever  cited.  Here  was  a  hard 
fact  to  be  disposed  of  somehow,  or  we  must  admit 
that  early  in  the  second  century  there  was  a  New 
Testament  canon  of  Scripture.  It  was  evaded  in  this 
way.  The  quotation  occurs  in  the  Latin  translation, 
and  is  a  gloss.  It  could  not  have  been  in  the  Greek 
original.  "  The  quotation-form  '  as  it  is  written^ " 
said  Credner,  "  used  for  the  New  Testament  books, 
is  for  that  time  unheard  of,  and  without  example. 
On  internal  grounds  we  must  question  the  correct- 
ness of  the  text  till  the  contrary  is  proved  to  us." 

The  contrary  is  now  proved.  In  the  "  Codex  Sini- 
aticus  "  we  have  the  oldest  Greek  manuscript  which 
the  world  possesses.  It  has  just  been  discovered, 
and  lo !  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas  reappears  entire, 
not  in  a  mutilated  copy,  but  the  whole  Greek  origi- 
nal. That  the  work  cannot  possibly  date  later  than 
the  year  lOO,  the  contents,  says  Tischendorf,  unex- 
ceptionably  show.  Others  carry  the  date  back  as  far 
as  the  year  80.  Turning  to  the  disputed  formula, 
there  it  is  in  the  old  Greek  parchment  manuscript 
"  AS  IT  IS  WRITTEN,"  and  the  smell  of  gloss  all  dis- 
appears. Tischendorf  does  not  conceal  his  delight 
and  exultation.     "  Surely  the  fact  that  at  the  opening 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.       1 45 

of  the  second  century,  proof  that  the  existence  of  an 
evangeUcal  canon  has  been  found,  is  a  crushing 
weight  against  the  boundless  play  of  hypothesis  in 
which  during  the  last  ten  years  the  history  of  the 
New  Testament  canon  has  been  involved."^ 

Finally,  the  authors  of  the  Appendix  to  John's  Gos- 
pel, furnish,  we  think,  an  indisputable  proof  of  its  gen- 
uineness. The  critical  reader  sees  at  once  that  the 
concluding  part  was  written  by  another  hand.  By  a 
still  more  careful  criticism  he  sees  that  John's  Gospel 
proper  ends  with  the  twentieth  chapter,  where  the 
writer  thus  closes  and  sums  up  the  whole,  "And 
many  other  miracles  truly  did  Jesus  perform  in  the 
presence  of  his  disciples  which  are  not  written  in 
this  book.  But  these  are  written  that  ye  might  know 
that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  and  that 
believing  ye  might  have  life  through  his  name." 
Then  follows  the  twenty-first  chapter,  beginning  as  a 
separate  piece,  not  at  all  continuous  with  what  goes 
before,  having  throughout  the  air  of  tradition,  in  a 
diiferent  style,  and  closing  with  two  passages  written 
professedly  by  another  person  with  idioms  and  turns 
of  expression  which  John  never  uses.  It  refers  to  a 
rumor  which  had  become  quite  current,  that  Jesus 
had  told  John  that  he  should  not  die  but  should  sui- 

1   Watin  wurden  unsere  Evangelien  verfasst?  p.  45.    It  is  very  doubt- 
ful whether  Barnabas,  "  the  companion  of  Paul,"    wrote  this  epistle. 
It  contains  many  silly  things,  as  it  needs  must    .n  attempting  to  ♦l?e« 
gorize  the  Old  Testamrm. 
10 


146  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

vive  the  rest  of  the  disciples  till  his  second  cc»ming. 
It  is  perfectly  plain,  from  the  writings  of  Paul  and 
Peter,  that  the  expectation  was  quite  general  of 
Christ's  second  personal  coming ;  and  that  the  time 
was  so  near  that  some  of  the  Apostles  would  live  to 
see  it,  and  so  would  be  translated  without  seeing 
death.  "  We  shall  not  all  sleep,  but  we  shall  all  be 
changed."  They  seem  to  have  construed  the  lan- 
guage of  Jesus  to  John  as  a  direct  promise  that  this 
would  be  so.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  John  dying  and 
no  Christ  appearing,  the  word  of  Jesus  would  seem 
to  be  compromised.  From  this  as  from  other  tokens, 
we  think  the  evidence  conclusive  that  the  last  chap- 
ter is  an  appendix  written  after  John's  death.  It 
undertakes  to  show  that  Jesus  did  not  give  any  such 
promise,  and  deeming  it  important  to  make  known 
just  what  he  did  say,  it  repeats  his  exact  language, 
and  repeats  it  twice  over :  "  Then  that  report  went 
abroad  among  the  brethren,  that  that  disciple  was 
not  to  die  ;  yet  Jesus  said  not  unto  him  that  he  would 
not  die,  but  If  it  be  my  will  that  he  remain  till  I 
come,  what  does  it  concern  thee  } "  Then  follow  these 
words :  "  The  person  (to  whom  this  rumor  referred) 
is  the  disciple  who  wrote  these  things  and  testifieth 
of  these  things,  and  we  know  that  his  testimony  is 
true."  No  one  ever  speaks  of  himself  in  this  way. 
Then  follows  the  extravagant  statement  of  the  clos- 
ing passage,  as  remote  as  possible  from  the  simplicity 
of  John's   narrative,  and  containing   Greek   idioms 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      1 47 

which  he  never  uses.  "And  there  are  also  many 
other  things  which  Jesus  did,  which,  if  they  should 
be  written  in  detail,  I  suppose  that  even  the  world 
itself  could  not  contain  the  books  that  would  be 
written." 

We  have  seen  how  eagerly  and  fondly  the  first 
hearers  of  the  Apostles  hung  upon  their  speech,  and 
how  they  would  ask  for  the  details  in  the  life  of  Jesus. 
That  this  was  so  at  Ephesus,  Polycarp  and  Papias 
are  unexceptionable  witnesses  as  cited  by  Irenaeus. 
Their  reports  coming  only  at  second  hand,  we 
should  receive  with  much  interest,  but  we  should 
not  expect  to  see  things  through  their  eyes  in  the 
severe  uncoloring  dayhght  as  seen  through  the  eye- 
witnesses themselves.  Things  would  appear  very 
much  as  in  the  closing  chapter  of  the  fourth  Gospel, 
and  their  excited  wonder  and  admiration  might  well 
dictate  the  closing  passage. 

But  this  appendix  becomes  a  most  important  and 
independent  testimony  to  John's  record  itself  It  is 
wanting  in  none  of  the  manuscripts,  and  it  becomes 
extremely  probable  that  it  went  forth  among  the  early 
copies  from  the  Church  of  Ephesus  or  the  constel- 
lated churches  over  which  he  presided,  as  their  testi- 
mony both  to  the  known  authorship  of  the  fourth 
Gospel  and  to  the  truth  of  its  contents  which  they 
had  heard  from  the  writer's  lips.  We  know  from 
other  sources  that  while  the  hearers  of  John  were 
yet  alive,  that  is,  in  the  first  decades  of  the  second 


148  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL.    . 

century,  the  fourth  Gospel  with  its  appendix  were  in 
the  canon  of  the  New  Testament,  and  it  becomes  al- 
most certain,  therefore,  that  no  copies  were  then  in 
circulation  without  it.  The  solemn  averment,  "  This 
is  the  disciple  who  testifieth  of  these  things  and  wrote 
these  things,  and  we  know  that  his  testimony  is  true," 
becomes  that  of  the  Church  at  Ephesus  which  had 
heard  year  after  year  the  details  of  the  life  of  Jesus 
from  his  lips  ;  which  had  received  the  legacy  of  his 
written  narrative,  indorsed  it  as  genuine,  and  sent  it 
forth  to  the  Christian  world.^ 

11.  The  enemies  of  Christianity,  during  the  period 
under  review,  furnish  the  same  conclusive  argument 
for  the  fourth  Gospel.  Conspicuous  among  these  is 
Celsus,  its  bitter  antagonist,  who  wrote  about  the 
year  1 50  to  refute  it.  Origen  answered  him,  and  has 
preserved  some  things  which  he  wrote.  Celsus  refers 
to  scandalous  reports  and  traditions  ;  says  he  could 
bring  forward  many  things  which  have  been  truly 
written  about  Jesus  of  a  very  different  character  from 
the  writings  of  his  own  disciples.  These,  however, 
he  says  he  will  forego,  and  proceeds  to  make  use  of 
the  four  evangelists  as  the  public  and  sole  authority 
acknowledged  by  the  Church.  He  refers  to  all  the 
four  Gospels,  and  quotes  them  ;  tries  to  show  their 
inconsistency  with  each  other,  dwells  upon  the  dis- 

1  Norton  considers  the  last  chapter  of  the  fourth  Gospel  as  John's 
writing,  except  the  last  two  verses.  Neander  ascribes  the  whole  to 
another  hand.     Both  consider  the  whole  chapter  an  appendix. 


IVITiVESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      1 49 

crepancy  between  Luke  and  John,  and  Matthew  and 
Mark,  touching  the  appearance  of  the  angels  at  the 
sepulchre ;  quotes  the  synoptics  repeatedly,  and  John 
several  times ;  seizes  upon  John's  designation  of 
Jesus  as  "  the  Logos  ;  "  ridicules  the  idea  that  blood 
and  water  flowed  from  his  side  at  the  crucifixion,  — 
a  fact  found  only  in  John's  narrative.  "  All  these 
things,"  he  says,  "  we  have  taken  out  of  your  own 
Scriptures,  we  need  no  other  witness,  for  you  fall 
upon  your  own  sword."  ^ 

There  were  two  classes  of  Gnostics :  there  were 
those  who  broke  with  the  Church  and  rejected  its 
Scriptures,  and  there  were  those  who  kept  within  it 
and  perverted  them.  Of  the  former  class  was  Mar- 
cion.  He  flourished  between  the  years  140  and  150. 
He  was  the  son  of  the  Bishop  of  Sinope  in  lesser 
Asia,  was  educated  in  the  Christian  faith,  but  fell 
away  from  it,  and  was  excommunicated.  He  rejected 
the  Old  Testament  as  being  only  the  work  of  the 
Demiurgus  ;  he  rejected  John's  Gospel,  and  probably 
Matthew  and  Mark,  not  because  he  disputed  their 
authorship,  but  because  he  held  the  Apostles  them- 
selves to  be  corrupters  of  the  true  faith.  He  retained 
Luke's  Gospel,  which  he  undertook  to  alter  and  ex- 
purgate, to  make  it  conform  to  his  views.  That  he 
was  acquainted  with  John's  Gospel  is  abundantly 
clear,  and  has  been  vainly  denied.  Tertullian,  who 
writes  to  refute  him,  says,  "  Marcion  having  got  the 

1  See  Tischendorf 's  tract,  pp.  27,  2S. 


150  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Epistle  of  Paul  to  the  Galatians,  who  blames  the 
Apostles  themselves  as  not  walking  uprightly  accord- 
ing to  the  truth  of  the  Gospel,  and  also  charges  some 
false  apostles  with  perverting  the  Gospel  of  Christ, 
sets  himself  to  weaken  the  credit  of  those  Gospels 
which  are  truly  such,  and  are  published  under  the 
name  of  Apostles  or  apostolic  menr  ^  The  fourth 
Gospel  is  here  clearly  referred  to,  and  afterwards  by 
name ;  and  Tertullian  states  the  reason  why  Marcion 
rejected  it.  "  The  Gospel  of  John  would  convict  him 
of  error."  This  shows,  beyond  any  reasonable  ques- 
tion, that  in  the  year  140  the  four  Gospels,  and  John's 
especially,  were  universally  ascribed  by  the  Church, 
and  its  enemies  as  well,  to  the  men  whose  names 
they  bear,  and  that  the  former  held  them  as  sacred 
and  canonical  authority.^ 

III.  We  come  next  to  a  very  interesting  and  im- 
portant mine  of  evidence  which  has  lately  been 
explored  by  a  highly  competent  and  skillful  hand. 
Every  one  knows  how  exceedingly  concise  are  our 
canonical  Gospels  ;  how  rigidly  they  hold  the  reader 
to  the  prominent  facts  pertaining  to  the  life  and 
public  ministry  of  Jesus  ;  how  little  they  gratify  mere 
curiosity,  and  how  free  they  are  from  gossiping 
details.  Their  majestic  simplicity  is  strong  evidence 
under  the  circumstances  of  a  controlling  and  shaping 
Providence,  for  these  are  very  different  productions 

1  Ad  Marcion,  lib.  iv.  c.  3. 

2  De  Came  Christi,  c.  3. 


WITNESSES  OF   THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      151 

from  those  which  would  naturally  have  been  dictated 
by  the  private  taste  and  judgment  of  their  authors. 
But  herein  v/as  a  most  tempting  opportunity  offered 
to  pious  fraud  to  try  its  hand  in  filling  up  the  sui> 
posed  gaps  in  the  narratives.  This  was  attempted 
very  early,  and  hence  arises  a  New  Testamejit  apoc- 
ryphal literature ;  forgeries  got  up  by  pretended 
friends  of  Christianity  which  they  tried  to  circulate 
under  apostolic  or  highly  honored  names.  Tischen- 
dorf,  the  prince  of  scholars  in  the  history  and  puri- 
fication of  the  true  text,  has  made  this  apocryphal 
literature  the  study  of  years,  and  they  furnish,  he 
says,  the  completest  proof  for  the  earliest  reception 
of  our  evangelical  canon.  This  holds  especially  true 
of  two  writings  :  the  "  Gospel  of  James  "  and  the 
"  Acts  of  Pilate." 

The  spurious  "  Gospel  of  James "  stands  in  such 
relation  to  our  Gospels,  which  it  tries  to  supplement, 
that  the  latter  must  have  been  a  long  time  in  circu- 
lation before  the  forgery  was  attempted.  There  are 
passages  in  the  writings  of  Justin  Martyr,  whose 
first  "Apology"  dates  as  early  as  138,  which  can  only 
be  traced  to  the  "  Gospel  of  James,"  and  which  show 
clearly  that  the  work  was  in  his  hands.  This  being 
so,  it  must  have  been  written  in  the  first  decades  of 
the  second  century,  and  therefore  Matthew  and  Luke, 
which  it  tries  to  supplement  in  matters  pertaining  to 
the  birth  and  parentage  of  Jesus,  must  fall,  beyond 
question,  within  the  first. 


152  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

The  "  Acts  of  Pilate  "  refer  not  only  to  the  synop- 
tics, but  to  John's  Gospel.  For  this  also  our  oldest 
witness  is  Justin.  In  his  first  "  Apology  "  he  refers 
to  various  things  foretold  concerning  the  crucifixion, 
and  of  Christ's  miraculous  healing.  He  gives  an 
account  of  the  trial,  death,  and  resurrection  of  Christ, 
and  adds,  "All  this  has  Pilate,  driven  by  his  con- 
science to  become  a  Christian,  reported  of  Christ  to 
the  emperor  Tiberius."  We  have  the  same  in  Ter- 
tuUian  given  in  more  detail. 

A  writing  answering  entirely  to  these  ancient  cita- 
tions, and  bearing  the  same  title,  has  come  down  to 
our  time  in  many  old  Greek  and  Latin  manuscripts 
which  Tischendorf  identifies  as  the  very  work  quoted 
by  Justin  and  Tertullian.  The  work  presupposes  the 
records  of  our  first  three  Gospels,  and  that  of  John 
beyond  all  question  ;  for  while  the  report  of  the  cru- 
cifixion and  the  resurrection  refer  to  the  former,  that 
of  the  trial  of  Christ  is  essentially  the  report  of  the 
latter.  An  apocryphal  book  then  was  in  existence 
in  the  year  138,  based  on  the  synoptics  and  the  book 
of  John.  It  must  have  been  written  some  time  be- 
fore to  have  obtained  credit  with  such  a  man  as  Jus- 
tin. It  carries  us  up  towards  the  beginning  of  the 
second  century,  and  therefore  the  Gospels  on  which 
it  was  based  must  have  originated  in  the  first.  "  It 
falls,"  says  Tischendorf,  "  not  as  the  lightning  flash- 
ing through  impervious  darkness,  but  it  is  one  of  the 
clearest  among  many  rays  of  light  out  of  the  post- 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      1 53 

apostolic  age  streaming  down  to  us  over  the  weight- 
iest question  of  Christendom."  ^ 

But  in  quite  another  way  these  apocryphal  gospels 
furnish  evidence  of  the  true  ones.  The  true  ones  in 
their  more  than  Doric  simplicity  and  divine  path(^s, 
in  moral  dignity  and  ethical  tone,  and  in  their  direct 
appeal  to  the  inmost  consciousness  of  human  nature, 
stand  forth  in  contrast  with  the  spurious  ones  even 
as  God's  work  in  nature  stands  in  contrast  with  the 
contrivances  of  men.  This  is  not  a  matter  of  indi- 
vidual taste  and  judgment.  Individuals,  as  Tertul- 
lian  and  Justin,  were  deceived.  The  churches  were 
not,  and  in  no  case  can  it  be  shown  that  a  forged 
Gospel  was  foisted  into  the  canon  of  Scripture  to  be 
generally  received.  The  same  spirit  that  breathed 
through  the  letter  of  the  Word  breathed  also  through 
the  heart  of  the  Church,  and  made  its  faculty  of 
recognition  in  the  main  unerring  and  its  vision 
clear.  The  apocryphal  Gospels  show  us  indubitably 
what  our  New  Testament  writings  would  have  been 
if  they  had  been  the  productions  of  the  second  cen- 
tury. All  that  gave  the  spurious  ones  local  and  tem-. 
porary  currency  was  the  grains  of  gold  filched  from 
the  evangelic  narratives  to  incorporate  with  their 
tinsel  and  sand.  An  epistle,  if  very  brief,  might  pos- 
sibly escape  detection.  But  when  forgers  undertook 
to  write  gospels,  though  they  borrowed  from  the  true 
ones,  their  own  despicable  puerilities  showed  more 

1   Wenn  wiirdcn  unsere  Evangelic Jt  vtrfasst,  pp.  29-40. 


154  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

surely  in  the  contrast.  They  tried  the  experiment 
repeatedly.  They  invented  their  "  Lives  of  Christ," 
and  these  compare  with  the  simple,  subUme  concep- 
tions of  our  Gospels,  and  especially  the  fourth,  as  the 
murky  bonfires  of  midnight  compare  with  the  stars 
that  shine  in  eternal  serenity  and  beauty  above  them. 
IV.  The  heretics  of  the  Church  are  a  company  of 
important  and  independent  witnesses.  There  was  a 
class  of  Gnostics,  as  already  intimated,  who  did  not 
take  their  position  outside  the  Christian  Church  and 
assail  it,  but  claimed  their  position  within  it.  They 
might  the  more  easily  have  maintained  it  after  the 
death  of  the  Apostles  if  there  had  been  no  Canon  of 
Scripture  by  which  their  notions  were  to  be  judged, 
but  only  loose  and  floating  traditions.  But  if  there 
was  such  a  canon  of  Scripture,  of  course  their  first 
object  would  be  to  pervert  it  and  bend  it  to  their 
purpose.  We  know  just  what  they  did  since  Ire- 
naeus  wrote  to  refute  them  ;  and  Hippolytus  who 
wrote  in  the  beginning  of  the  third  century  has 
given  an  account  of  their  opinions,  and  how  they  de- 
fended them,  and  the  works  of  both  these  fathers  are 
in  our  hands.  Irenaeus  says,  "  So  firmly  are  our 
Gospels  established  that  the  heretics  themselves  bear 
witness  unto  them,  and  appeal  to  them  to  confirm 
their  own  doctrine."  These  heretics  belonged  to  the 
first  half  of  the  second  century.  Irenaeus  wrote 
about  twenty  years  after  their  time.  His  words  give 
the  pronounced  judgment  of  the  second  half  of  the 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.       1 55 

second  century  on  the  first  half ;  and  more  than  this, 
we  have  detailed  accounts  of  the  writings  of  these 
heretics  which  confirm  the  judgment. 

Among  these  heretics  Valentine  stands  conspicu- 
ous. He  came  from  Egypt  to  Rome  before  the  year 
140,  and  passed  some  twenty  years  in  that  city. 
Throughout  his  whole  system  he  borrows  his  ter- 
minology from  the  fourth  Gospel.  Irenaeus  expressly 
asserts  that  the  sect  used  this  Gospel  to  the  fullest 
extent,  and  grounded  their  doctrines  upon  the  proem. 
The  Word,  the  Only  Begotten,  Life,  Light,  Fullness, 
Truth,  Grace,  were  the  train  of  hypostatized  -^ons 
which,  with  God,  made  up  the  famous  octave  of  Val- 
entine. That  the  author  of  the  fourth  Gospel  bor- 
rowed from  Valentine  is  fantastically  absurd.  That 
Gnosticism  should  try  to  get  the  fourth  Gospel  out  of 
its  way  by  taking  it  up  into  its  omnivorous  recepta- 
cle and  translating  it,  somewhat  as  the  ass  translated 
Bottom  the  weaver,  comports  with  its  whole  genius 
and  history. 

Hippolytus  confirms  Irenaeus.  He  gives  several 
instances  where  Valentine  had  quoted  John's  Gospel, 
always  perverting  it  and  trying  to  dovetail  it  into  his 
own  system. 

The  disciples  of  Valentine  followed  up  the  work. 
Ptolcmseus  was  one  of  them  who  quotes  Matthew  sev- 
eral times,  and  once  the  fourth  Gospel,  naming  it  as 
the  work  of  an  apostle.  "  The  apostle  says,  that  all 
things  were  made  by  Him,  —  the  Word,  —  and  with- 


156  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

out  Him  nothing  was  made."  Heracleon  was  an- 
other disciple  and  a  distinguished  one.  He  was  con- 
temporary with  Valentine.  He  did  not  merely  quote 
John,  but  wrote  an  entire  commentary  upon  the 
fourth  Gospel,  fragments  of  which  are  preserved  by 
Origen,  in  which  it  is  plain  that  he  sought  ingeniously 
to  gnosticize  the  whole  book  from  beginning  to  end. 

But  Valentine's  school  had  a  still  earlier  founder  in 
Basilides,  who  also  comes  from  Alexandria  in  Egypt. 
He  flourished  as  early  as  125.  He  wrote  twenty-four 
books  on  the  Gospels  ;  and  that  our  four  Gospels  are 
the  ones  thus  designated  as  a  whole  is  nearly  cer- 
tain. He  quotes  Luke  and  John  word  for  word,  and 
tries  to  bring  their  expressions  into  accord  with  his 
system.  He  also  refers  to  the  star  of  the  Magians  in 
Matthew.  Moreover  the  divine  octave,  named  from 
the  principal  terms  of  John's  Proem,  is  at  the  basis 
of  Basilides'  whole  scheme,  and  Valentine  must  have 
found  it  there.^ 

Here  then  we  have  a  false  and  fantastic  theory 
of  Christianity  elaborated  by  its  authors,  all  through 
the  second  quarter  of  the  second  century,  appeal- 
ing constantly  to  the  four  Gospels  as  authority, 
specially  anxious  to  subsidize  John  and  bend  that 
to  their  purpose,  and  for  that  end  writing  a  whole 

1  For  these  citations  by  the  Gnostic  heretics  read  Tischendorfs 
Wen  zuurden,  etc.,  pp.  19-23.  For  other  citations  see  Bunsen's  Hip- 
polytiis  tind  seine  Zeit,  vol.  i.  pp.  63-66. 

For  quotations  of  Basilides,  and  of  his  heresy  generally,  see  Eus« 
'#ius  2i  E.  iv.  7. 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND  CENTURY.      1 57 

commentary  upon  the  book ;  involving  so  vitally 
the  themes  of  that  book,  that  sharp  and  bitter 
controversies  took  place  between  two  parties  in 
the  Church,  —  the  Orthodox  and  the  heretics  of 
that  day,  —  and  which  continued  down  to  the  close 
of  the  century.  Both  parties  appeal  to  one  canon  or 
rule  of  faith  in  which  the  Gospel  of  John  is  conspic- 
uous, for  in  its  interpretation  its  grand  themes  were 
vitally  concerned.  There  are  men  who  try  to  make 
us  believe  that  right  in  the  midst  of  this  debate, 
when  appeals  were  made  by  keen-eyed  controversial- 
ists to  canonical  Christian  Scriptures,  a  new  and 
spurious  book,  involving  more  than  all  the  others  the 
very  matter  in  dispute,  was  foisted  upon  the  Chris- 
tian public,  received  by  everybody  without  a  murmur 
of  dissent,  elevated  to  a  place  in  the  sacred  Canon, 
and  spread  through  various  languages  into  all  the 
Christian  communions  as  of  like  authority. 

We  will  put  a  parallel  case.  We  are  separated 
by  nearly  one  hundred  years  from  the  declaration  of 
American  independence,  and  the  stirring  events 
which  led  to  the  formation  and  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States,  the  political  canon  of 
the  country.  After  its  adoption  parties  grew  up,  both 
appealing  to  its  authority,  both  grounded  on  opposite 
interpretations.  Suppose  that  just  before  our  civil 
war  broke  out,  the  State  Rights  Party,  not  finding 
secession  in  the  Constitution  so  plainly  as  they  wished, 
got  out  a  new  chapter,  added  it  to  the  old  Constitu- 


158  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

tion,  and  proclaimed  it  as  a  genuine  portion  of  the 
fundamental  law  ;  and  forthwith,  and  without  dissent 
and  simultaneously  throughout  the  country,  it  is  so 
regarded  by  all  parties,  quoted  as  such  in  Congress, 
cited  in  the  courts  of  justice,  and  no  trace  of  contro- 
versy about  it  was  ever  known  or  heard  of  A  more 
monstrous  violation  of  all  the  laws  of  historical  evi- 
dence and  probability,  and  even  of  the  first  principles 
which  determine  human  conduct,  could  not  well  be 
conceived.  And  yet  the  parallel  fails  in  two  particulars 
to  give  the  argument  in  its  unconquerable  strength. 
We  are  one  people,  and  speak  and  write  in  the  main 
one  language.  The  early  Christian  communions 
were  separated  by  the  barriers  of  dialect  and  nation 
which  would  render  a  simultaneous  or  general  recep- 
tion of  a  forgery  a  more  violent  impossibility.  Our 
fundamental  law  concerns  us  only  in  our  temporal 
affairs.  Their  fundamental  law  concerned  them,  so 
they  thought,  in  their  eternal  well-being,  and  deter- 
mined the  conditions  of  heaven  and  hell. 

V.  We  come  to  a  species  of  evidence  already  in- 
dicated, which  Tischendorf  gives  as  the  crowning 
portion  of  his  argument  for  the  New  Testament 
canon.  We  have  said  that  translations  of  the  New 
Testament  were  made  into  other  languages,  for  the 
use  of  the  churches,  and  that  these  translations  were 
the  identical  old  Latin  Itala  and  Syriac  Peschito  which 
have  come  down  to  us.  They  must  have  been  made 
soon  after  the  middle  of  the  second  century.     This  is 


WITA^ESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      159 

certain  from  the  quotations  of  Irenaeus  and  Tertul- 
lian.     How  is  this  ascertained  ? 

The  manuscripts  of  the  New  Testament  were 
copied  and  recopied  for  the  hundredth  time,  and  it 
was  inevitable  that  some  mistakes  would  creep  in. 
The  mistakes  do  not  affect  the  main  substance  and 
doccrine  of  the  New  Testament,  but  they  run  down 
into  countless  minutiae,  such  as  the  variation  or 
omission  of  particles.  Sometimes  a  word  or  a  whole 
sentence  has  fallen  out ;  sometimes  a  word  or  sen- 
tence, which  might  have  been  originally  a  gloss  in 
the  margin,  has  crept  into  the  text.  Not  ten  years 
would  have  elapsed  after  a  manuscript  had  been  dis- 
missed from  the  hand  of  an  apostle  or  his  amanuensis 
to  be  copied  and  recopied,  before  these  various  read- 
ings would  begin  to  appear.  Of  course  the  nearer  we 
get  towards  the  autograph  of  the  writers  the  purer 
our  text  will  be.  Moreover  it  will  be  easy  to  see  that 
this  department  of  investigation  furnishes  the  most 
absolutely  certain  of  all  circumstantial  evidence  to 
identify  the  received  canon  of  any  specified  period, 
because  the  evidence  branches  into  such  delicate  and 
interi finable  veins.  The  prince  of  scholars  in  this 
department  is  Tischendorf,  who  has  made  the  explo- 
ration of  it  the  main  business  of  his  life. 

We  have  said  thai  the  Greek  text  which  preceded 
and  formed  the  basis  of  the  translations  of  the  second 
century  is  clearly  identified  in  the  Codex  Sinaiticus, 
including  our  New  Testament  with  its  four  Gospels. 


l6o  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

We  identif}^  it,  therefore,  as  the  New  Testament  of 
the  churches  in  the  year  150 ;  not  of  one  church  but 
of  all ;  not  alone  at  Rome  but  at  Carthage,  where 
Tertullian  used  the  Latin  translation  made  from  it : 
at  Lyons  in  Gaul  where  Irenaeus  used  the  same 
thii  ty  years  before  him  ;  at  Antioch  in  Syria,  where 
Theophilus  must  have  used  the  old  Syriac  version 
or  its  basis  in  the  year  1 70  ;  at  Alexandria  in  Egypt, 
where  Origen  wrote,  whose  quotations  are  in  striking 
agreement  therewith. 

But  the  argument  does  not  stop  here.  The  Greek 
text  in  general  use  in  the  year  150,  thus  clearly  iden- 
tified, though  the  purest  we  have  is  not  absolutely 
pure.  It  had  already  been  a  great  while  in  use,  for 
it  is  clearly  demonstrable  that  a  rich  text-his- 
tory LIES  BEHIND  IT.  There  is  unmistakable  evi- 
dence that  it  had  already  been  copied  and  recopied 
and  long  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  Tischendorf 
claims  this  as  one  of  the  most  important  and  certain 
of  the  results  of  his  labors.  "  If  this  is  so,"  he  says, 
"  and  there  lies  a  long  course  of  the  text-history  of 
our  Gospels  before  the  middle  of  the  second  century  ; 
before  the  time  when  canonical  authority,  along  with 
a  settled  church  order  threw  up  a  strong  barrier 
against  private  modifications  of  the  sacred  text, — 
and  I  pledge  myself  to  give  complete  proof  of  this  in 
its  proper  place,  —  then  we  must  demand  for  this 
history  the  space  at  least  of  half  a  century.  Must  we 
not  date,  then  —  I  will  not  say  the  origin  of  the  Gos- 


WITNESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      l6l 

pels,  —  no ;  but  the  beginning  of  the  evangeUcal 
canon  about  the  end  of  the  first  century?  And  is 
not  this  result  so  much  the  more  certain  because  all 
the  historical  facts  of  the  second  century  which  we 
have  brought  forward  are  in  harmony  therewith  ? " 


We  have  exhibited  in  the  two  preceding  chapters 
an  outline  of  what  is  known  as  the  historical  or  exter- 
nal evidence  of  the  four  Gospels.  If  the  reader  has 
imagined  that  it  depends  on  uncertain  traditions  he 
will  probably  be  surprised,  if  he  has  now  surveyed  it 
for  the  first  time,  at  its  cumulative  and  irresistible 
strength.  He  will  ask,  if  there  is  not  another  side  to 
the  argument.  There  is  undoubtedly  another  side, 
but  there  is  none  that  we  know  of  which  can  change 
the  aspect  of  the  case  unless  we  say  that  all  history 
is  baseless  and  fabulous.  We  notice  briefly  two 
objections  which  may  be  supposed  to  break  the  force 
of  the  historical  argument  as  we  have  stated  it. 

I.  The  Alogians,  a  small  and  obscure  sect,  ap- 
peared in  Asia  Minor  soon  after  the  middle  of  the 
second  century,  who  rejected  the  fourth  Gospel  and 
the  Apocalypse.  Montanus  and  his  followers  who 
claimed  the  special  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  an- 
nounced the  coming  of  the  millennium,  had  appealed 
to  John's  Gospel  to  support  their  fanaticism,  claim- 


I62  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

ing  for  themselves  the  promise  of  the  Paraclete  and 
its  realization.  This  extravagance  the  Alogians  op- 
posed. They  met  it  with  a  denial  that  John  wrote 
the  fourth  Gospel,  asserted  its  inconsistency  with  the 
other  three,  and  ascribed  it  to  Cerinthus,  the  con- 
temporary of  John,  Baur  makes  much  of  this  fact. 
What  does  it  really  prove  ?     Two  things  :  — 

First,  that  the  Gospels  were  generally  appealed  to 
as  canonical  authority  in  the  Church  at  the  middle  of 
the  second  century,  and  that  the  fourth  was  univer- 
sally received  as  genuine,  —  a  small  sect  who  could 
not  believe  its  doctrines  because  of  their  own  ration- 
alizing tendency  being  an  exception  to  a  general  rule. 
Second,  that  the  fourth  Gospel  as  then  known  ^\\(\ 
received,  was  not  a  recent  book,  for  the  very  men 
who  seek  to  set  aside  its  authority,  assign  its  origin 
to  the  times  of  John,  though  most  absurdly  to  Ce- 
rinthus, whom  John  opposed. 

The  fact  argues  not  against  the  genuineness  of  the 
book,  but  strongly  in  its  favor,  and  absolutely  annihi- 
lates the  pretension  that  it  could  have  originated  after 
the  middle  of  the  second  century. 

2.  Another  ground  of  objection  is  as  follows  :  The 
verdict  of  the  second  century  touching  the  genuine- 
ness of  historical  works,  cannot  be  accepted  as  final, 
because  the  laws  of  historical  evidence  were  not  then 
understood.  Learned  men  even  were  credulous  and 
easily  imposed  upon.  Works  were  then  received 
which  we  know  now  to  be  forgeries,  and  quoted  by 


WIT.VESSES  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY.      1 63 

such  men  as  Justin  and  Tertullian  ;  and  there  are 
writings  in  our  Canon  at  this  time,  such  as  the  Epistle 
of  Jude  and  the  Second  of  Peter,  which  were  not 
written  by  the  men  whose  names  they  bear. 

There  are  two  plain  answers  to  this.  One  may 
be  as  completely  disqualified  by  skepticism  as  by 
credulity  for  applying  the  laws  of  historical  evidence. 
The  habit  of  doubting,  caviling,  perverting,  and 
emptying  words  of  their  meaning,  in  order  to  suborn 
the  facts  of  history  to  suit  our  theories,  may  even 
bring  mist  and  darkness  over  a  whole  province  of  his- 
tory which  lies  else  in  peaceful  sunlight.  We  have 
no  right  to  assume  as  a  foregone  conclusion,  that  the 
supernatural  can  only  appear  in  the  natural,  as  we 
have  seen  it,  and  then  make  our  assumption  an  axiom 
of  universal  criticism.  Yet  this  is  what  Strauss  ex- 
pressly and  Baur  impliedly  have  done.  Allowing  that 
there  is  a  spiritual  world,  and  therefore  that  the 
class  of  facts  which  the  New  Testament  records,  is 
possible,  writers  of  the  second  century  may  be  vastly 
better  qualified  to  judge  the  record  of  them  impar- 
tially, than  those  of  the  nineteenth,  whose  minds  are 
darkened  by  a  narrow  or  one-sided  philosophy.  Writ- 
ers of  the  Alexandrian  School,  to  name  no  others, 
such  as  Origen,  Clement,  and  Pantaenus  so  far  as  he 
is  known  to  us,  were  learned  men,  not  unskilled  in 
historical  criticism  ;  and  added  to  these  qualifications 
were  intuitions  made  quick  and  clear  by  the  breath- 
ings of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  discern  the  Scripture  that 
throbbed  freshly  with  its  life. 


1 64  I^HE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

But  in  addition  to  this,  there  was  the  communis 
sensus  of  the  Christian  Church  when  its  glory  was 
unstained  by  worldly  ambitions  or  sectarian  strifes. 
The  Christ  of  Scripture  then  glowed  warmly  as  the 
Christ  of  consciousness.  Spurious  documents  might 
obtain  temporary  or  local  currency.  But  they  would 
differ  from  the  genuine  as  a  daub  from  a  landscape, 
and  though  individuals  might  be  deceived,  the  Church 
Cathohc  would  shed  them  off  by  the  Power  that 
reigned  alike  in  its  Bible  and  in  the  souls  which  it 
had  redeemed  and  purified. 

But  the  argument  does  not  proceed  solely  under 
the  authority  of  these  writers  of  the  second  century, 
nor  that  of  the  church  to  which  they  belonged.  It  is 
various  and  cumulative,  gathering  strength  and  vol- 
ume with  every  new  investigation  and  every  new 
discovery  of  documents.  Our  supposed  better  knowl- 
edge of  the  science  of  history,  and  more  sure  ap- 
plication of  the  rules  which  apply  to  it,  do  not  bring 
the  subject  of  the  New  Testament  canon  into  greater 
doubt  and  difficulty,  but  bring  it  rather  within  the 
resolving  power  of  a  surer  and  more  enlightened 
criticism. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

CHRISTIANITY   AS   A   NEW    INFLUX    OF   POWER.* 

FROM  the  close  of  the  second  century  up  to 
about  the  year  50  there  is  an  order  of  phenom- 
ena not  dwelt  upon  in  profane  history,  nor  much  in 
popular  histories  of  any  kind ;  not  because  they  are 
less  authenticated  than  any  other  class  of  events,  but 
because  historians  writing  from  the  view-point  of 
naturalism  do  not  know  what  to  make  of  them,  and 
ignore  them.  They  are  not  confined  to  the  period 
above  indicated.  They  belong  in  some  sort  to  the 
more  interior  history  of  the  Church  in  all  ages.  But 
during  the  period  indicated  they  are  marked  and 
palpable,  and  unmixed  with  papal  legends  and  im- 
postures ;  for  the  hierarchy  had  not  then  arisen,  and 
the  Church  was  in  her  bridal  robes.  They  were 
then  new,  taking  the  Church  itself  by  surprise,  un- 
known to  the  old  effete  religions  as  then  existing, 
whether  Jewish  or  Pagan. 
This  new  order  of  phenomena  may  be  described 

1  The  principal  authorities  for  this  chapter  beside  the  New  Testa- 
ment are  Origen,  Tertullian,  and  Justin.  They  are  cited  and  en- 
larged upon  by  Neander  in  the  first  section  of  his  Church  History^ 
and  in  his  Memorials  of  Christian  Life,  Part  i.  ch.  i. 


l66  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

as  a  disturbance  everywhere  of  the  old  eqiiilibriuin 
of  forces,  social,  moral,  and  spiritual.  There  were 
i:)erturbations  in  the  old  system  of  statics  like  those 
which  the  astronomers  observed  among  the  planetary 
bodies,  while  yet  the  orbit  of  Uranus  was  supposed 
to  be  the  boundary  of  our  solar  system.  There  must 
])e  the  proximity,  said  Leverrier,  of  some  body  or 
system  of  bodies  which  we  have  never  taken  into 
the  account ;  and  so  marked  and  decisive  was  the 
influence  that  he  directed  his  telescope  with  the  ut- 
most confidence  that  the  unknown  disturber  would 
swim  into  its  field.  The  disturbance,  however,  in  the 
field  of  history  is  so  great  as  not  only  to  produce 
irregularities  of  motion  but  to  break  up  the  old  sys- 
tem of  forces  altogether  and  direct  them  anew. 

We  get  a  very  poor  and  inadequate  conception  of 
the  introduction  of  Christianity  into  this  world  when 
we  imagine  its  Apostles  going  about  and  making  an 
exhibition  of  miraculous  performances  as  proofs  of 
their  message.  The  miracles  did  not  cause  the  sj^read 
of  Christianity,  but  were  simply  its  outcome  on  the 
plane  of  nature.  Christianity  came  only  when  the 
spiritual  heavens  were  brought  in  closer  and  more 
naked  contact  with  the  human  mind,  and  hence  pro- 
duced a  NEW  INFLUX  OF  POWER  in  human  nature 
itself 

In  comparing  two  coterminous  periods  of  history, 
it  is  easy  sometimes  to  see  the  second  in  the  first, 
and  to  regard  one  as  simply  a  development  of  the 


CHRISriANITY  A  NEW  INFLUX  OF  POWER,    i^j 

Other.  Thus  the  Protestant  reformation  was  heralded 
a  century  before  it  came  by  signs  which  announced 
its  approach,  —  to  use  the  rhetoric  of  Coleridge,  —  as 
clearly  as  the  purple  clouds  of  the  dawn  announce 
the  approach  of  morning.  It  is  the  past  developing 
into  the  future.  Let  the  historian  scan  the  age  of 
Augustus  Caesar  and  he  will  find  there  the  science, 
the  philosophy,  the  jurisprudence,  the  natural  culture, 
and  the  religions,  Hellenic,  Jewish,  and  Roman,  of 
the  two  centuries  follov/ing  ;  to  be  modified  as  they 
might  be  by  the  ordinary  forces  of  human  develop- 
ment. The  cause  of  the  disturbances  which  we  are 
about  to  notice  he  will  not  find ;  and  unless  he  re- 
sorts to  celestial  observations  he  will  set  his  glass  in 
vain. 

The  new  influx  of  power  is  traceable  as  one  of  the 
divine  signatures  of  Christianity  generally,  but  is 
found  all  through  the  second  century,  and  always  in 
connection  with  and  within  the  circle  of  Christian 
ideas  and  the  Christian  communions.  We  mean  by 
the  influx  of  power,  not  the  voluntary  and  normal 
forces  of  education  and  culture,  but  a  new  force,  and 
one  before  unknown  in  the  world,  lying  back  of  all 
human  volition,  producing  a  new  creation  out  of  the 
old  chaos  and  transforming  human  nature  itself. 
This   is   manifest   in   various   ways. 

r.  First  and  on  its  lowest  plane  of  operation,  there 
is  a  new  power  of  mind  over  matter,  of  the  spirit 
over  the   body,  found  principally  in  a  healing  and 


1 68  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

cleansing  divine  life,  flowing  downward  and  outward 
into  its  lowest  forms.  Of  course  this  would  be  seen 
first  in  the  cure  of  nervous  diseases,  because  the 
nerves  are  the  inmost  texture  kj\  the  physical  body 
and  join  it  with  the  spiritual,  but  it  is  seen  in  a  restor- 
ative hand  laid  on  all  the  diseases  of  the  human 
form.  This  was  called  "  miracle  "  in  the  language  of 
the  times,  because  it  came  as  a  surprise,  but  it  was 
in  conformity  with  universal  spiritual  laws  operating 
within  the  natural  as  the  heavens  were  pressing  anew 
into  the  affairs  of  earth.  For  these  phenomena  we 
depend  on  no  uncertain  and  private  testimony,  and 
they  are  altogether  different  in  kind  from  the  lying 
miracles  of  the  monks  of  the  middle  ages.  Origen 
appeals  to  them  as  matters  of  common  experience. 
Grievous  diseases  and  states  of  insanity,  which  had 
withstood  all  other  means  of  the  healing  art,  disap- 
pear when  the  subjects  of  them  are  brought  within 
the  circle  of  Christian  truth  and  influence.  No  tricks 
of  jugglery  were  used,  but  healing  power  ran  down 
through  the  mind  and  the  nerves  and  the  whole  phys- 
ical frame,  the  entire  outward  man  being  recreated 
from  within.  Tertullian  and  Justin  Martyr  make  the 
same  appeal.  They  cite  these  facts  as  notorious- 
"  That  the  kingdom  of  evil  spirits,"  says  the  latter, 
"  has  been  destroyed  by  Jesus,  you  may  even  at  the 
present  time  convince  yourselves  by  what  passes  be- 
fore your  own  eyes  ;  for  many  of  our  people,  of  us 
Christians,  have  healed  and  still  continue  to  heal  in 


CHRISTIANITY  A  NE  W  INFL  UX  OF  PO  WER.     1 69 

every  part  of  the  world,  and  in  your  city  of  Rome, 
numbers  possessed  of  evil  spirits,  such  as  could  not 
be  healed  by  other  exorcists,  simply  by  adjuring  them 
in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ."  Irenaeus  says  the  same, 
and  declares  that  many  came  into  the  Christian  pro- 
fession because  the  evil  influx  which  we  call  insanity, 
and  which  then  held  so  many  minds  in  baleful  eclipse, 
receded  and  went  out  before  the  reviving  glory  of  the 
inflowing  Christ  when  the  subjects  came  to  them- 
selves and  rejoiced  in  their  right  minds. 

So  full  and  vital  was  this  new  influx  of  power  that 
sometimes  the  apparent  dead  were  brought  back  to 
life.  We  say  apparent  dead,  for  we  will  not  assume 
as  yet  to  know  the  exact  line  which  divides  the  mys- 
terious realms  of  life  and  death  in  putting  off"  mortal- 
ity, or  that  turning  back  and  recrossing  the  line  is  a 
possibility  within  the  supreme  divine  order.  We 
only  say  that  those  who  to  the  common  apprehension 
had  died,  sometimes  had  a  reviving  consciousness 
within  the  sphere  of  Christian  influx,  and  lived  years 
afterwards  as  well  known  witnesses  of  it  in  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  To  this  fact  Irenaeus  bears  unexcep- 
tionable testimony.  But  it  is  only  one  class  of  facts 
among  others,  notorious  and  well  attested  through 
the  whole  period  in  review,  showing  that  the  healing 
Jind  restoring  mercy  was  not  only  in  first  things  but 
last  things,  not  only  Iv  dpxf},  but  in  the  ultimations  of 
the  natural  world. 

2.   A  quickening  of  the  interior  perceptions   re- 


I70  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

suiting  frequently  in  open  spiritual  vision,  is  another 
remarkable  phenomenon  of  the  period  under  review. 
It  is  found  as  late  as  the  times  of  Origen,  but  it  is 
continuous  and  more  intense  as  we  ascend  the 
stream.  As  we  find  it  in  this  period  it  has  nothing 
in  common  with  the  visions  of  the  monks,  real  or 
pretended,  of  a  later  age.  It  often  came  unsought, 
and  to  those  outside  the  communion  of  the  Christian 
Church,  and  ignorant  of  its  system  of  faith,  yet  bear- 
ing in  upon  them  gleams  and  intuitions  of  the  same 
truths  that  lie  at  the  centre  of  the  Christian  system. 
We  mistake  altogether  when  we  suppose  that  a  few 
unlettered  men,  merely  by  means  of  personal  persua- 
sion and  eloquence,  spread  the  Gospel  laterally  from 
Palestine  throughout  the  Roman  empire,  as  we  find  it 
in  the  second  century.  No  wonder  that  Mr.  Gibbon 
is  nonplussed  when  he  tries  to  account  for  its  rapid, 
almost  simultaneous  diffusion,  as  if  it  had  spread  of 
itself  There  is  a  large  class  of  facts  perfectly  well 
attested,  even  while  we  keep  within  the  track  of  com- 
mon history,  showing  that  the  descending  heavens 
were  urging  their  transcendent  realities  into  all  re- 
ceptive minds,  sometimes  with  power  so  great  that 
their  scenery  lay  visibly  upon  the  opening  soul. 
Tertullian  says  the  majority  in  his  time  came  to  a 
knowledge  of  the  true  God  by  visions  {e  visionibiis)  \ 
that  is,  they  came  into  the  Christian  Church  not  be- 
':ause  its  truths  had  first  been  urged  upon  them  from 
vithout,  but  because  they  had  been  borne  in  from 


CHRISTIANITY  A  NEW  I  NFL  UX  OF  PO  WER,    i  y  j 

above.  Tertullian  probably  exaggerates,  as  he  was 
wont  to  do,  but  Origen  affirms  the  same  class  of  facts 
not  only  as  well  known  in  the  Christian  communions, 
but  as  within  his  personal  knowledge  and  experi- 
ence, and  calls  God  to  witness  the  truth  of  what  he 
sa3^s.  These  testimonies  are  important,  not  only  as 
accounting  to  us  for  the  rapid  diffiision  of  Christian- 
ity in  this  early  time,  but  for  its  invincible  grasp 
upon  the  common  mind,  showing  it  a  religion  which 
prevailed,  not  so  much  by  propagandism  as  by  its 
outcome  from  the  heart  of  God  into  the  heart  of 
humanity,  prepared  by  some  new  agency  for  its  re- 
ception. 

3.  Closely  connected  with  the  order  of  phenomena 
just  named  was  another  not  less  remarkable.  The 
realities  of  a  super-sensible  world  through  all  this 
period  within  the  Christian  communions  are  not  so 
much  matters  of  faith  as  of  knowledge.  Lying  on 
the  general  face  of  society  throughout  the  Roman 
empire  there  is  darkness  on  this  subject  that  might 
be  felt.  The  philosophers  did  not  believe  their  own 
speculations,  nor  the  poets  the  creations  of  their  im- 
aginations, much  less  did  the  common  mind  have 
any  intelligent  convictions  whatsoever.  The  Roman 
Senate  might  be  said  to  represent  the  best  culture 
and  intelUgence  pertaining  to  religion,  philosophy, 
science,  and  morals,  which  their  times  afforded.  In 
the  debate  as  to  what  disposition  should  be  made  of 
Catiline's  conspirators,  Julius  Caesar,  then  the  High 


172  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

Priest  of  the  national  religion,  rose  and  opposed  cap* 
ital  punishment,  on  the  ground  that  death  was  the 
extinction  of  conscious  existence,  and  therefore  was 
not  so  much  punishment  as  a  release  from  it,  thus 
publicly  in  the  face  of  the  Senate  denying  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul.  Cato  was  there ;  and  Cicero,  who 
wrote  the  Tusculan  Questions,  was  there.  Both  re- 
plied, and  their  replies  are  reported,  but  on  this  all 
important  point  they  made  no  distinct  issue  with 
Caesar,  showing  that  even  with  the  best  minds  the 
doctrine  of  immortality  was  only  an  airy  hypothesis. 
There  had  been  no  change  in  this  respect  in  the 
times  which  we  have  under  review,  except  that  they 
present  the  following  remarkable  phenomena.  In  the 
dense  and  general  darkness  we  see  little  communions 
called  churches,  dotting  the  regions  of  night  Uke 
spangles  of  gold  and  silver,  gradually  enlarging  their 
circuit,  while  into  each  the  heavens  were  open,  and 
tidings  of  God  and  immortality  were  flowing  free. 
Here  was  something  which  the  age  itself  could  not 
understand,  and  which  we  shall  understand  just  as 
little  if  we  suppose  that  this  new  faith  subliming  into 
knowledge  was  merely  wrought  by  preachers  who 
proved  their  assertions  by  miracles,  or  by  reading  the 
New  Testament  documents.  Any  one  must  see  that 
such  causes  merely  operating  ab  extra^  were  quite  in- 
adequate to  produce  such  results. 

4.  But  perhaps  more  remarkable  yet  was  the  new 
transforming  power  over  human  nature,  everywhere 


CHRISTIANITY  A  NEW  INFL UX  OF  PO WER.     1 73 

lifting  it  up  and  cleansing  it.  It  is  not  merely  the 
reformation  of  manners  that  now  meets  our  obser- 
vation. It  is  the  new  and  original  types  of  charac- 
ter, and  what  is  quite  as  remarkable,  they  were 
evolved  out  of  the  very  material  which  a  philosopher 
would  have  passed  by  as  worthless.  And  more  re- 
markable yet,  they  were  evolved  very  often  without 
the  will,  and  even  against  the  will  of  the  subjects 
themselves,  when  those  subjects  were  brought  within 
the  circle  and  operation  of  the  new  influence.  There 
was  some  power  lying  behind  all  personal  volition, 
and  choice,  transfusing  the  subject's  whole  being  and 
bringing  a  new  creation  out  of  it  which  astonished 
himself  as  much  as  any  one.  Undoubtedly  there 
was  some  preparation  in  the  experience  of  such  men, 
which  made  their  natures  ductile  under  the  new  su- 
pernatural influence ;  they  were  not  made  subjects  of 
it  by  arbitrary  selection ;  what  we  mean  to  say  is,  it 
came  to  them  without  their  seeking ;  they  did  not  go 
after  it  and  find  it,  but  it  came  and  found  them,  and 
lifted  them  out  of  the  grooves  they  had  moved  in, 
with  a  force  they  no  more  thought  of  resisting  than 
the  sea-weed  torn  up  by  the  roots  would  resist  the 
swellings  of  the  tides.^ 

Celsus,  who  wrote  against  Christianity,  evidently 

1  Origen  says  in  his  treatise,  Contra  Celsus,  "  Many,  as  it  were, 
against  their  will,  have  been  brought  over  to  Christianity ;  since  a 
certain  Spirit  suddenly  turned  their  reason  from  hatred  against  Chris- 
tianity into  zealous  attachment  even  at  the  cost  of  their  lives,  and 
presented  certain  images  before  the  soul  either  awake  or  in  vision." 


174  '^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

with  great  subtlety  and  acumen,  makes  it  one  of  his 
sharpest  points  of  objection  that  it  professes  to  ac- 
comphsh  impossibilities  ;  that  the  idea  of  changing 
human  nature,  and  making  it  over  is  utterly  absurd. 
"  It  is  manifest  to  every  one,"  says  he,  "  that  it  lies 
within  no  man's  power  to  produce  an  entire  change 
in  a  person  to  whom  sin  has  become  a  second  nature, 
even  by  punishment,  to  say  nothing  of  mercy,  for  to 
effect  a  complete  change  of  nature,  is  the  most  dif- 
ficult of  things."  To  this  the  Christian  apologists 
replied  in  substance  :  Come  and  learn  for  yourselves. 
Come  into  our  assemblies  and  see  what  and  who  we 
are,  and  from  what  ranks  and  conditions  we  have 
been  gathered.  See  how  the  old  savagery  and  hate 
have  been  expelled  from  us,  and  how  we  can  now 
love  our  neighbors  as  ourselves,  and  forgive  our 
enemies  and  render  good  for  evil,  and  blessing  for 
cursing. 

We  have  two  scenes  presented  to  us  :  one  in  Lyons, 
and  one  in  Smyrna  of  lesser  Asia,  in  which  the  new 
type  of  character  is  brought  in  vivid  contrast  with 
the  depravity  of  the  age  out  of  which  it  had  been 
won.  We  mean  the  persecutions  and  martyrdoms 
described  in  the  letters  sent  out  by  those  churches 
making  known  their  calamity  to  sister  churches.  We 
make  all  due  allowance  for  the  enthusiasm  inspired 
by  Christian  faith,  but  even  then  we  witness  virtues 
and  graces  of  character  and  examples  of  a  renewed 
and  sanctified  human  nature  wrought  out  of  the  low- 


CHRIS riANITY  A  KL IV  INFL  UX  OF  PO  WER.     1 75 

est  and  roughest  material,  far  more  illustrious  than 
any  other  miracles  that  we  know  of.  It  is  magnan- 
imity, faith,  love,  patience,  heroism,  and  the  sweet- 
est spirit  of  forgiveness  appearing  like  an  "  orb  of 
tranquillity  "  in  a  general  storm  of  hate,  revenge,  and 
cruelty.  To  their  tortures  by  racks,  by  pincers,  by 
faggots,  by  the  tossings  of  wild  beasts,  by  being 
seated  in  burning  chairs  that  the  fumes  of  their 
roasting  flesh  might  come  up  about  them,  amid  scoffs 
and  jeers  from  the  rabble  and  when  a  word  of  retrac- 
tion would  have  saved  them,  "  They  went  on  joyful, 
much  glory  and  grace  being  mixed  in  their  faces,  so 
that  their  bonds  seemed  to  form  noble  ornaments, 
and  like  those  of  a  bride  adorned  with  various  golden 
bracelets,  and  impregnated  with  the  sweet  odor  of 
Christ,  they  appeared  to  some  anointed  with  earthly 
perfumes."  ^ 

These  great  changes  were  not  developments  out 
of  the  age,  but  of  a  Power  which  was  reversing  its 
tides.  They  were  wrought  everywhere  in  the  name 
of  Christ,  and  within  the  influence  of  Christian  ideas 
and  the  Christian  communions  ;  very  often  the  new 
influx  from  within  meeting  the  presentation  of  truth 
from  without  as  by  a  stroke  of  God.  Thus  from  the 
ruins  of  a  reversed  and  degraded  humanity  as  a 
background  they  bring  out  these  portraitures  of  an- 

1  For  an  account  of  these  martyrdoms  given  in  the  Letters  of  the 
Churches  of  Lyons  and  Smyrna,  see  Eusebius,  lib-  iv.  c.  15  ;  also  lib. 
V.  c.  i. 


176  THE  FOUR r II  GOSPEL. 

gelic  life  and  beauty.  The  change  in  these  persons 
could  not  be  better  described  than  by  saying  "  the 
Holy  Ghost  fell  on  them ; "  for  not  any  voluntary 
agency  had  wrought  the  change,  but  a  sudden  in- 
come of  power  through  the  consciousness.  These 
phenomena  occur  as  you  ascend  along  the  second 
century  into  and  towards  the  middle  of  the  first,  and 
they  appear  in  the  moral  world  like  those  you  would 
witness  in  the  natural  if  you  went  out  at  mid-winter 
when  the  ground  was  covered  with  snow  and  the 
forests  tinkled  with  ice,  amid  which  a  few  trees  scat- 
tered here  and  there  were  appearing  in  the  bloom 
and  the  greenness  of  their  summer  glories.  Any 
mind  of  the  least  philosophical  bent  and  untram- 
meled  by  false  theories,  ascending  the  stream  of  his- 
tory, would  conclude  that  "  something  had  happened," 
and  that  this  something  was  of  a  very  extraordinary 
character  thus  to  turn  the  stream  out  of  its  course. 

Ascending  through  this  series  of  phenomena  we 
come  to  the  times  embraced  in  our  New  Testament 
canon.  The  reader  will  see  that  the  earliest  of  our 
ecclesiastical  history  does  not  stand  forth  as  excep- 
tional ;  that  the  annals  of  the  Church  for  more 
than  a  century  afterward,  to  come  down  no  further, 
give  us  a  continuation  of  the  same  order  of  events 
described  by  Luke  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
and  of  the  dispensation  of  the  Spirit  inaugurated  on 
the  day  of  Pentecost.  The  current  of  history  as 
we  ascend,  prepares    us    for  the  events  they  record 


CHRISTIANITY  A  NE  W  INFL  UX  OF  TO  WER.     I J  J 

SO  that  they  break  upon  us  without  surprise.  We 
ascend  and  note  the  perturbations  with  expectant 
minds,  —  Hke  Dr.  Kane's  men  travelUng  northward 
and  watching  the  flight  of  summer  birds  and  the 
growing  evidence  of  some  mysterious  and  warmer 
cHme,  till  the  open  Polar  Sea  broke  on  their  sight, 
its  waters  shimmering  in  the  sun  and  its  waves  dash- 
ing at  their  feet. 

Ascending  this  stream  we  come  to  a  literature  un- 
questionably genuine,  bringing  us  into  the  very  at- 
mosphere of  the  warm  open  sea.  There  is  one  man 
who  appears  as  the  central  figure  of  this  literature ; 
whose  writings  and  personal  history,  while  they  are 
entirely  congenerous  with  the  history  we  have  been 
now  tracing,  fling  a  light  over  the  whole,  disclosing 
the  causes,  and  the  only  adequate  ones,  of  these  mys- 
terious perturbations. 

There  was  a  man  who  started  from  Jerusalem 
towards  Damascus  on  a  mission  of  persecution, 
proud,  cruel,  and  vindictive  ;  he  came  from  Damas- 
cus with  a  heart  yearning  towards  all  mankind,  with 
the  humility  of  a  child,  and  with  affections  as  tender 
as  a  woman's  love.  He  went  towards  Damascus 
with  an  intellect  narrowed  down  to  a  rapier's  point 
and  harder  than  its  steel ;  he  came  from  Damascus 
with  an  intellect  broadened  and  fused  with  divine 
fire,  and  with  a  logic  so  invincible,  and  with  its  links 
so  warm  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  that  it  moulded  the 
thousfht  of  the  world  for  eighteen  centuries      What 


178  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

does  his  change  date  from  ?  Epileptic  fits,  says  Dr. 
Strauss.^  I  met  Jesus  Christ  on  the  way,  says  Paul, 
in  a  light  from  heaven  which  dimmed  the  Syrian 
noon. 

We  are  brought  to  the  earliest  literature  of  the 
Church  in  the  authentic  letters  of  this  most  distin- 
guished among  the  converts  to  the  Christian  faith. 
Some  of  them  were  written  not  more  than  twenty 
years  after  the  death  and  ascension  of  Christ.  Four 
of  them,  —  and  those  the  most  important,  —  the 
most  exacting  criticism  has  never  called  in  question. 
Nine  of  them  are  conceded  as  genuine  in  the  criti- 
cism of  Renan,  who  is  sufficiently  exacting  and  fas- 
tidious for  the  most  refined  scepticism.  Thirteen 
we  regard  as  genuine  beyond  all  reasonable  doubt  or 
cavil ;  and  only  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  so  called, 
popularly  ascribed  to  Paul,  has  been  shown  very 
clearly  from  evidence  internal  and  external  to  hi»ve 
emanated  from  some  other  source. 

Later  than  these  letters,  we  have  the  history  as- 
cribed to  Luke,  —  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  about 
half  of  which  is  a  record  of  Paul's  life  and  labors. 
The  first  chapters  Renan  considers  as  legendary  be- 
cause of  the  supernatural  events  there  narrated, 
which  by  his  theory  cannot  come  within  the  range  of 
authentic  history.  The  "  tendency  theory  "  of  Baur 
makes  the  whole  book  a  compilation  of  the  second 
century.     The  critics  of  the  anti-supernatural  school 

1  lu  his  last  Leben  Jesu,  p.  302. 


CHRIST! A  NJTY  A  NE  W  INFL  UX  OF  PO  WER.     1 79 

agree  together  as  to  the  status  of  Paul.  "The 
Christ,"  says  Renan,  who  gives  him  personal  revela- 
tions, "  is  his  own  phantom  ;  it  is  himself  he  hears 
while  thinking  he  hears  Jesus."^ 

Their  criticisms  of  the  book  of  Acts  are  futile  so 
far  as  designed  to  shut  out  and  keep  out  the  super- 
natural. Those  letters  which  Renan  concedes  were 
written  by  Paul  beyond  all  reasonable  question,  con- 
tain the  essential  elements  of  the  book  of  Acts,  in- 
ckide  in  their  range  the  most  important  events  which 
it  records,  while  at  the  same  time  leading  us  up  to 
the  very  spot  where  the  gates  open  and  the  new  in- 
flux of  power  comes  in  to  sweep  down  the  Christian 
ages  and  carry  the  old  land-marks  of  history  before  it 
as  drift  wood  upon  the  waves.  If  you  tamper  with 
the  book  of  Acts  you  may  just  as  well  keep  on  and 
tamper  with  all  the  history  that  follows  in  continuous 
stream  for  more  than  three  hundred  years.  It  were 
as  if  Dr.  Livingstone,  in  following  up  the  Nile  to  its 
origin,  should  come  to  a  thicket  out  of  whose  shad- 
ows a  copious  flood  of  waters  is  swelling  free,  and 
should  say.  Here,  I  think,  we  have  found  its  source. 
We  will  go  no  farther,  for  the  river  has  come  to  an 
end. 

Paul  had  never  seen  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  the 
flesh.  He  tells  us,  too,  that  he  conferred  not  with 
flesh  and  blood  ;  he  did  not  receive  Christianity  from 
any  other  persons  who  had  seen  the  Lord  Jesus  in 

1  Life  of  Saint  Fault  ch.  xxi. 


l8o  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  flesh.  How  then  did  he  receive  it  ?  He  says 
that  after  his  conversion  he  went  into  Arabia,  and 
thence  returned  to  Damascus,  and  only  after  three 
years  went  up  to  Jerusalem.^  Meanwhile  he  gives  us 
to  understand  that  the  Christianity  he  was  to  preach 
and  expound  he  received  by  direct  revelation  from 
Jesus  Christ,  and  in  such  completeness  and  integrity, 
and  with  such  grasp  on  its  interior  truths,  that  some 
who  had  been  with  Christ  all  the  days  of  his  mission 
on  earth  were  left  far  below  him,  sticking  as  yet  in 
the  mere  letter,  and  only  to  be  released  from  its 
scales  as  he  had  been,  by  the  new  influx  of  power 
from  the  risen  and  glorified.  This  Jew,  imprisoned 
of  late  in  the  hardest  Jewish  shell,  appears  suddenly 
with  the  shell  shattered  in  pieces  under  his  feet, 
looking  down  upon  it  in  triumphant  scorn,  much  as 
we  may  suppose  the  immortal  spirit  new-risen  in 
glory  looks  down  on  the  body  which  lately  incum- 
bered it.  Moreover,  a  whole  system  of  truth,  diviner 
and  lovelier  than  he  had  ever  dreamed  of,  he  now 
holds  and  expounds  as  a  concrete  reality,  involving  a 
new  doctrine  of  God,  of  man,  of  justification  and 
redemption,  of  the  resurrection,  of  the  Church  as  a 
universal  brotherhood,  and  the  kingdom  of  Christ  as 
the  universal  reign  of  righteousness  on  the  earth. 
All  this,  he  says,  "  I  neither  received  of  man, 
neither  was  I  taught  it  but  by  the  revelation  of  Jesus 
Christ."  Not  only  so,  but  the  ordinances  of  Chris- 
1  Gal.  1.  11-24 


CHRISTIANITY  A  NE IV  I  NFL  UX  OF  PO  WER.      1 8 1 

tianity  which  were  to  symbolize  its  truths  forever,  he 
says,  were  given  him  direct  from  the  Lord  Jesus,  and 
the  scene  of  the  Last  Supper  is  described,  and  the 
language  repeated  by  which  the  ordinance  was  first 
estabHshed,  coinciding  substantially  with  the  account 
which  the  synoptics  gave  some  time  afterwards  from 
their  own  memory  of  the  scene.^ 

Moreover,  in  times  of  perplexity  and  fierce  opposi- 
tion from  unbelievers  when  difficulties  seemed  to 
close  him  round  as  a  wall  of  adamant,  he  says  the 
Lord  Jesus  stood  by  him  to  cheer  him  on,  or  his 
angels  encircled  him  in  bright  array,  and  an  open 
path  was  then  made  for  him,  or  the  prison  doors 
opened  and  he  went  triumphant  on  his  mission.^ 
Not  by  seductive  eloquence,  not  by  human  logic 
alone,  often  by  simple  prayer  and  the  laying  on  of 
hands,  came  the  influx  of  power  involving  all  present 
in  a  sphere  of  new  life  and  of  transforming  grace,  and 
lifting  up  their  interior  minds  to  quick-coming  con- 
ceptions of  truth  that  shamed  all  the  philosophies  of 
the  age.  Moreover,  this  Paul,  once  so  hard  and  bit- 
ter with  theologic  hate,  becomes  under  the  new  in- 
flux as  tender  hearted  as  a  child,  and  writes  that 
chapter  on  charity  which  has  been  a  sweet  lyric  of 
the  heart,  and  tongued  its  highest  inspiration  to  the 
present  hour. 

1  Compare  i   Cor.  xi.  23-26  and   Matt.  xxvi.  26-29;  Mark  xiv. 
22-25  ;  Luke  xxii.  17-20. 

2  Compare  Romans  xv.  18,  19;  2  Cor.  xii.  1-12  ;  Gal.  ii.  2 ;  Acts 
xvi.  25,  26. 


1 82  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Those  things  in  the  book  of  Acts  at  which  the 
skeptical  critics  boggle  most,  the  speaking  with  new 
tongues,  the  visions  of  supernal  realities,  the  miracu- 
lous healing,  the  incoming  of  the  Holy  Ghost  at  the 
name  of  Christ,  are  all  found  in  Paul's  unquestioned 
letters  to  the  churches,  and  we  are  cornered  up  to 
two  alternatives  in  tracing  Christianity  to  its  origin. 
The  system  of  truth  and  influence  which  in  its  broad- 
ening course  raised  Europe  out  of  barbarism,  found 
England  a  horde  of  savages,  and  made  it  the  England 
of  to-day,  shattered  the  Roman  empire,  and  on  the 
ruins  of  the  old  paganism  to  which  the  heavens  were 
nearly  closed,  formed  the  Christian  communions,  into 
which  tidings  of  immortaUty  came  full  and  free,  — 
this  system,  followed  up  in  history  to  the  earliest 
literature  which  attempts  to  account  for  its  origin,  is 
found  in  the  writings  of  a  man  who  had  epileptic  fits, 
or  swoons,  in  which  he  saw  a  phantom  which  he 
called  Jesus,  —  or  else  to  a  real  Jesus  Christ,  through 
whom  the  heavens  were  opened,  and  swept  the  in- 
most chords  of  our  human  nature  with  the  sovereign 
grace  and  transforming  power  of  Almighty  God. 

It  has  become  fashionable  of  late  to  decry  Paley 
and  "  the  Paley  men."  His  unpardonable  sin  is  the 
perfect  transparency  of  his  style  and  thought.  What 
he  saw  he  saw  in  sunlight,  though  he  did  not  see 
very  deep  and  far  ;  and  he  had  the  rare  faculty  of 
making  his  reader  see  exactly  what  he  saw  himself. 
He  never  pretended  to  tell  what  he  did  not  see,  and 


CHK/STIA:VITY  A  .VE IV  hVFL UX  OF  PO  WER.      I  ^^ 

call  his  subjective  fog-shapes  the  advanced  thought 
of  his  age.  Hence  his  offense  to  theology.  He 
wrote  a  little  book,  which  may  still  be  found  on  the 
neglected  shelves  of  old  libraries,  which  is  a  masterly 
demonstration  through  internal  circumstantial  evi- 
dence and  mutual  corroboration  of  the  authenticity 
of  the  book  of  Acts  and  the  Pauline  letters.  It  has 
never  been  answered,  for  the  excellent  reason  that 
it  does  not  admit  of  any  answer.  As  respects  the 
Epistles  and  the  book  of  Acts,  Mr.  Andrews  Norton 
very  well  says  Paley  has  "  put  the  matter  at  rest."  ^ 

1  Paley's  argument  in  the  HorcB  Paulina,  and  the  kind  of  evidence 
which  he  exhibits,  may  be  illustrated  in  this  way,  — 

A  piece  of  paper  was  once  found  which  had  served  as  the  wadding 
of  a  musket.  Unrolled,  it  was  found  to  be  part  of  a  newspaper  which 
had  been  torn  in  two.  If  the  missing  portion  could  be  found  in  the 
possession  of  certain  parties  certain  facts  of  great  local  interest  could 
be  established.  Another  piece  was  found,  but  how  could  it  be  iden- 
tified as  the  missing  one  ?  Why,  the  torn  edges  fitted  exactly  to- 
gether. Not  only  so,  but  the  torn  words  also  came  together  so  as  to 
make  sense  and  meaning  along  the  whole  line  of  separation.  Nobody 
*'^Mbted,  of  course,  that  the  two  pieces  made  originally  one  whole. 
This  gives  some  idea  of  the  way  in  which  the  facts  and  allusions  of 
the  book  of  Acts  and  the  Pauline  letters  fit  together  and  interpene- 
trate, as  belonging  to  one  historic  whole.  They  run  into  minutiae 
and  delicate  coincidence  which  no  forger  would  have  dreamed  of  and 
no  mere  compiler  could  have  happened  upon.  Paley's  argument 
must  be  icad  to  be  appreciated,  and  when  read  it  gives  the  go-by  to 
the  boundless  guessings  of  P>aur's  "tendency  theory  and"  the  critique 
of  Renan  on  the  four  letters  which  he  rejects  as  spurious. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

THE   PAUSE    IN    HISTORY. 

IN  the  last  chapter  we  ascended  the  stream  of 
Christian  history  through  the  first  two  centuries 
of  the  Christian  era.  Let  us  reverse  this  process. 
Let  us  come  down  from  the  other  side  and  see  what 
forces  there  were  out  of  which  Christianity  could 
have  been  developed  in  the  natural  course  of  human 
progress. 

The  Greek  culture  and  philosophy  had  their  con- 
summation in  Plato  four  hundred  years  before  Christ. 
We  should  anticipate  were  we  to  describe  here  that 
marvelous  achievement  of  human  genius.  We  will 
only  say  now  that  nowhere  else  do  we  find  a  system 
wrought  out  by  the  human  intellect  which  anticipates 
so  nearly  the  truths  of  Christianity.  Nowhere  before 
or  since  that  we  can  discover  has  human  culture  ad- 
vanced so  far  or  caught  brighter  gleams  of  the  higher 
realities.  If  humanity  was  to  come  by  development 
into  the  open  light  of  a  spirit-world,  it  should  have 
been  from  the  Hellenic  rehgious  consciousness. 
Hence  onward,  however,  its  course  in  this  Ime  of 
development  is  ever  downward. 

At  about   150  c.   c.   Greece  was  merged   in  the 


THE  PAUSE  IN  HISTORY.  igr 

Roman  empire  and  became  a  part  of  it.  In  the  wide- 
spread servility  of  the  empire  there  is  a  dreary  desert 
varied  only  by  changes  from  unbelief  to  superstition, 
and  from  blank  despair  to  a  kindling  hope  that  some 
divine  interposition  might  be  nigh.  From  the  Acad- 
emy to  the  Lyceum,  from  the  Lyceum  to  the  Porch, 
and  from  the  Porch  to  the  New  Academy,  the  gravi- 
tation is  sure  and  continuous  towards  Nihilism,  —  the 
crumbling  away  of  all  the  foundations  of  faith  and 
knowledge.  Plato  lived  in  the  future ;  he  was  the 
child  of  hope  and  aspiration.  He  saw  an  interior  way 
which  led  the  soul  upward  to  God,  and  to  a  per- 
sonal immortality  in  her  native  star  where  once  more 
she  shall  hear  the  music  of  the  heavenly  spheres. 
All  this  is  fantasy  to  the  intensely  logical  and  prac- 
tical mind  of  Aristotle.  He  scouted  the  ideals  of 
Plato.  He  started  from  sensuous  phenomena  as  the 
prime  ground  of  human  knowledge,  and  from  this 
the  steps  of  his  logic  did  not  conduct  him  to  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul.  Aristotle  acknowledges  the 
Supreme  Reason,  the  God  of  Plato ;  God  and  the 
World  have  had  an  eternal  co-existence.  But  they 
have  no  such  inexistence  as  Plato  had  taught.  The 
Cosmos  has  a  potentiality  of  its  own,  and  God  is  in 
it  only  as  a  foreign  element.  Its  changes  are  not  a 
Continuous  progress  from  lower  to  higher  towards 
some  goal  of  ideal  perfection,  but  oscillations  back 
and  forth  within  its  own  limitations.  With  Aristotle 
there  is  no  ever-bri^htenino:  future  for  the  v/orld  or 


1 86  THE   FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

for  humanity.  The  stoics  who  build  upon  him  do 
not  Uke  him  separate  the  world  from  G<xl.  They 
sink  God  in  the  world.  They  identify  them  as  body 
and  soul,  as  essence  and  form  ;  God  the  essence 
being  a  divine  fire,  and  matter  being  an  evolution 
out  of  it,  to  undergo  periodic  involution,  —  that  is,  be 
consumed  and  taken  back  into  the  divine  essence 
again.  This  periodic  evolution  and  involution  make 
up  the  grand  aeons  of  the  universe,  its  conflagration 
and  recreation.  They  are  what  always  has  been  and 
always  will  be,  the  eternal  round  and  round  of  the 
Divine  activity,  according  to  the  laws  of  fate,  which 
man  can  neither  escape  nor  change.  Man  is  the 
plaything  of  this  eternal  gyration,  appearing  one  mo- 
ment on  the  phenomenal  surface,  to  disappear  the 
next  and  be  sucked  back  on  his  way  to  absorption  in 
the  eternal  essence.  This  stoic  fatalism  inspired  the 
patience  of  great  minds,  accepting  the  inevitable, 
putting  on  the  pride  of  a  godUke  courage  that  could 
scorn  alike  the  pains  and  pleasures  of  the  hour,  and 
like  Lear  meet  the  winds  and  the  thunderbolts  with 
kingly  defiance.  Nevertheless,  in  this  amazing  de- 
scent from  Plato  to  Zeno  it  is  remarkable  how  hu- 
manity, divested  of  immortal  fife,  has  retired  into  the 
background,  and  in  the  alternate  rise  and  subsidence 
of  the  tides  of  being  and  non-being,  man  belongs 
ever  to  the  latter  division,  and  is  the  froth  on  the 
highest  curl  of  the  waves. 

From  Zeno  to  Arcesilaus,  the  founder  of  the  New 


THE  PAUSE  IN  HISTORY.  187 

Academy,  the  strenuous  opponent  of  the  stoic  phi- 
losophy, the  transition  is  natural  and  easy  enough. 
It  is  natural,  that  is,  to  distrust  the  grounds  of  knowl- 
edge  when  knowledge  leads  to  the  brink  of  despair. 
Arcesilaus,  planting  himself  on  the  doctrine  of  the 
old  masters,  Plato  and  Aristotle,  denied  the  validity 
both  of  sensuous  reason  and  intellectual  intuition. 
For  denial  of  the  first  he  had  abundant  authority  in 
Plato ;  for  denial  of  the  second  he  had  abundant  au- 
thority in  Aristotle.     They  cancel  each  other  like 
positive  and  negative  ;  each  is  positive  where  the 
other  is  negative,  and  each  is  negative  where  the 
other  is  positive,  and  the  result  is  nothing.     The 
disciples  of  the  New  Academy  can  defend  with  equal 
eloquence  any  proposition  and  its  opposite,  and  prove 
both  sides  true  and  false  at  the  same  time.     Car- 
neades,  once  a  stoic  himself,  but  afterwards  a  zealous 
convert  of  the  New  Academy,  came  to  Rome  with 
great  affluence  of  learning  and  a  most  bewitching 
eloquence.     He  was  sent  thither  by  Athens  as  her 
ambassador  because  of  his  persuasive  oratory.    There 
he  delivered  his  famous  discourses  for  and  against 
justice  ;  speaking  first  in  support  and  then  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  same  doctrines  both  in  philosophy  and 
morals.     The  young  men  were  enchanted  ;  and  Cato 
insisted  that   the   ambassadors   from  Greece  should 
be  dismissed  with  all  possible  despatch   lest    their 
prolonged  stay  should  corrupt  the  youth  of  Rome. 
But  Rome  was  already  corrupt,  for  faith  was  every- 


1 88  THE  FOURi'H  GOSPEL. 

where  dead,  and  the  flooring  of  all  knowledge  had 
fallen  through.  The  Greek  religion  had  spent  its 
force.  It  had  awakened  aspirations  which  it  could 
not  satisfy.  It  had  caught  gleams  of  beautiful  ideals 
which  it  could  not  incarnate.  It  had  found  rents 
through  the  mist  into  a  golden  age  of  the  past  and  a 
golden  age  of  the  future.  But  that  future  was  an 
enchanted  island  across  stormy  waves.  It  might  be 
a  dream  and  not  a  reality,  and  the  darkness  had  come 
down  again  like  a  cover  and  shut  it  clean  out.  There 
was  nothing  in  the  Roman  religion  which  could  take 
the  place  of  the  Hellenic  or  was  fit  to  supersede  it. 
It  had  no  prophets  nor  seers  ;  no  openings  upward 
or  forward  ;  only  a  heavy  ritual  to  be  worked  mechan- 
ically by  priests  and  haruspices.  Its  mvsteries  were 
not  those  of  Apollo  and  his  choir,  — 

"  Who  hymn  the  great  Father 
Of  all  things  ;  and  then 
The  rest  of  Immortals, 
The  actions  of  men  ; " 

but  they  consisted  in  the  shape  and  appearance  of  the 
entrails  of  animals,  in  the  flight  of  birds  to  right  or 
left,  or  in  the  alternatives  "  whether  the  sacred  chick- 
ens ate  greedily  or  hung  their  heads  ! "  As  religion 
sank  down  into  sense  the  worship  of  the  gods  was 
superseded  by  the  worship  of  the  Emperor.  Their 
statues  were  decapitated,  and  the  head  of  the  Em- 
peror placed  upon  them.  The  Jupiter  Olympus  of 
Phidias  ending  with  the  bust  of  Caligula,  represents 


fHE  PAUSE  m  HISTORY.  189 

pretty  well  the  change  of  faith  from  its  heavenly 
idealizations  to  the  ugly  features  of  the  time.  Of 
course  sensible  men  had  no  faith  in  the  fooleries  of 
the  haruspices,  and  only  believed  in  them  as  having 
some  influence  over  superstitious  and  vulgar  minds. 
Cicero,  who  wrote  the  "Tusculan  Questions"  and 
"  De  Natura  Deorum,"  accepts,  nevertheless,  the  con- 
clusions of  the  New  Academy ;  and  declaring  it  im- 
possible to  rise  beyond  the  probable,  and  deploring 
the  sad  necessity  of  renouncing  the  discovery  of 
truth,  he  cries  out  bitterly  that  he  doubts  of  all,  and 
of  himself.  Seneca  relapses  into  the  stoic  pantheism, 
declares  God  inseparable  from  nature,  and  divinizes 
the  sun.  Caesar  we  said,  proclaimed  from  the  Senate- 
house  that  death  is  the  extinguishment  of  all  con- 
scious existence,  and  nobody  seriously  disputed  him.^ 

1  The  Roman  Senate  were  convened  December  5,  B.  c.  63,  in  the 
Temple  of  Concord,  to  decide  on  the  fate  of  the  fellow  conspirators  of 
Catiline  who  had  been  arrested  and  were  held  in  custody.  At  no 
time  was  the  civil  and  religious  character  of  the  Senate  more  con- 
spicuously represented.  The  proposition  is  before  them  to  put  the 
prisoners  to  death.  Caesar  opposed  the  motion  on  the  ground  that 
death  was  an  end  of  all  consciousness  and  therefore  too  mild  a  pun- 
ishment. Cato  and  Cicero  were  in  favor  of  it.  The  debate  consti- 
tutes one  of  the  curious  passages  of  history.  Caesar  was  Chief  Pon- 
tiff, the  highest  functionary  of  the  State  Religion. 

Sallust  thus  reports  Caesar :  — 

"  De  poena  possumus  equidem  dicere  id  quod  res  habet ;  in  luctu 
ttque  miseris  mortem  aerumnarum  requiem,  non  cruciatem  esse ;  earn 
cuncta  mortalium  mala  dissolvera ;  ultra  neque  curae  neque  gaudii 
locum  esse."  —  Bell.  Cat.y  ch.  51. 

"  In  grief  and  misery  death  is  not  torture  but  a  rest  from  troubles ; 


I  go  THE   FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Magicians  and  fortune-tellers  stroll  about  everywhere^ 
and  these  mercenary  vagabonds  become  the  self- 
assumed  interpreters  of  the  mysteries  of  Ufe.  In  the 
dumbness  of  the  oracles  and  the  awful  hush  on  the 
minds  of  men,  we  can  easily  believe  Plutarch  where 
he  says  that  a  voice, — "Great  Pan  is  dead  !"  seemed 
to  come  from  the  sea,  articulate  in  the  booming  of 
its  waves. 

Two  results  follow  inevitably  the  decay  of  faith 
and  the  paralysis  of  the  religious  faculty.  Sorrow  is 
without  consolation,  and  cries  into  vacancy ;  morality 
is  without  support,  and  human  nature  relapses  fright- 
fully into  its  native  savagery.  How  piteous  are  the 
plaints  of  bereavement  and  how  barren  the  topics  of 

it  dissolves  all  the  ills  of  mortals  ;  beyond  there  is  no  place  either 
for  sorrow  or  joy." 

Cato  replied,  following  closely  and  refuting  generally  all  Caesar's 
political  arguments ;  but  coming  to  this  he  bestows  on  it  a  single 
sentence  which  sounds  very  much  like  delicate  satire  of  the  popular 
faith.     He  says,  — 

"  Bene  et  composite,  C.  Caesar  paulo  ante  in  hoc  ordine,  de  vita  et 
morte  disseruit ;  falsa,  credo,  existimans,  quae  de  inferis  memoran- 
tur;  diverso  itinere  malos  a  bonis  loca  tetra,  inculta,  foeda  atque 
formidolosa  habere." — Ch.  52. 

"  Very  well  and  in  good  order  Caesar  a  little  before  in  this  connec- 
tion, discourses  about  life  and  death ;  thinking,  I  really  believe,  those 
things  to  be  false  which  they  tell  us  about  Hades ;  that  the  wicked 
go  a  different  way  from  the  good  into  places  that  are  foul,  rough, 
fetid,  and  fearful." 

What  Cato  thought  himself  on  this  point  he  leaves  us  to  doubt, 
Cicero,  in  his  fourth  oration  agamst  Catiline,  refers  to  Caesar's  asser- 
tion without  assent  or  dissent.  The  whole  shows  how  little  practical 
faith  there  was  in  the  Hades  of  the  poets. 


THE  PAUSE  IN  HISTORY,  1 91 

consolation  in  this  pause  between  the  death  of  the 
old  religions  and  the  incoming  of  the  new  !  Cicero 
has  lost  a  lovely  daughter,  and  his  friend  Sulpicius 
Severus  writes  from  Greece  thinking  to  soothe  the 
anguish  of  the  father's  heart.  The  letter  has  often 
been  quoted,  and  its  import  is,  —  Why  bemoan  the 
death  of  a  girl,  when  she  and  all  of  us,  together  with 
cities  and  empires,  are  passing  down  the  throat  of 
everlasting  oblivion  ? 

This  affectation  of  comfort  in  despair,  indicates 
the  want  which  uttered  itself  louder  and  louder  from 
minds  whose  sensibilities  had  not  been  quenched  in 
the  wide-spread  sensuality,  or  where  the  human  had 
not  merged  in  the  brute.  Clemens,  a  noble  Roman 
who  lived  about  the  time  of  the  first  diffusion  of  the 
Gospel,  thus  gives  voice  to  these  wants  of  the  heart, 
this  very  orphanage  of  human  nature.  "  I  was  from 
my  early  youth  exercised  with  doubts  which  had 
found  entrance  to  my  soul  I  hardly  knew  how.  Will 
my  existence  terminate  at  death ;  and  will  no  one 
hereafter  be  mindful  of  me,  when  infinite  time  sinks 
all  human  things  in  forgetfulness  }  It  will  be  as  well 
as  if  I  had  not  been  born.  When  was  the  world 
created  and  what  existed  before  the  world  was  }  If 
it  has  always  existed  it  will  always  continue  to  exist. 
If  it  had  a  beginning  it  will  likewise  have  an  end. 
And  after  the  end  of  the  world  what  will  there  be 
then  ">  It  may  be  the  silence  of  death,  or  it  may  be 
something  of  which   no   conception  can  be  formed. 


192  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Incessantly  haunted  by  such  thoughts,  which  came  \ 
know  not  whence,  I  was  sorely  troubled  so  that  I 
grew  pale  and  emaciated,  —  and  what  was  most  ter- 
rible, whenever  I  strove  to  banish  this  anxiety  as 
foolish,  I  only  experienced  the  renewal  of  my  suffer- 
ings in  an  aggravated  degree.  I  resorted  to  the 
schools  of  the  philosophers,  hoping  to  find  some  cer- 
tain foundation  on  which  I  could  repose  ;  and  I  saw 
nothing  but  the  building  up  and  pulling  down  of 
theories,  nothing  but  endless  dispute  and  contradic- 
tion ;  sometimes,  for  example,  the  demonstration  tri- 
umphed of  the  soul's  immortality,  then,  again,  that 
of  its  mortality.  When  the  former  prevailed  I  re- 
joiced ;  when  the  latter,  I  was  depressed.  Then 
was  I  driven  to  and  fro  by  the  different  repre- 
sentations ;  and  forced  to  conclude  that  things  ap- 
pear not  as  they  are  in  themselves  but  as  they  hap- 
pen to  be  presented  on  opposite  sides.  I  was  made 
more  giddy  than  ever,  and  from  the  bottom  of  my 
heart  sighed  for  deliverance."  In  this  distress  of 
mind  Clemens  resolved  to  visit  Egypt  and  hunt  up  a 
magician  to  summon  a  spirit  from  the  other  world* 
but  some  sensible  philosopher  dissuaded  him. 

Such  was  the  hunger  of  human  nature  in  this 
solemn  pause  of  history.  The  wide  spread  decay 
of  the  moral  sentiment  and  the  frightful  corrup- 
tion of  manners,  were  a  necessary  consequent  of 
the  paralysis  of  the  spiritual  faculties.  The  amuse- 
ments of  Roman   ladies  were  the  cruelties   of  the 


THE  PAUSE  IN  HISTORY.  193 

amphitheatre,  and  the  shrieks  from  rows  of  cruci- 
fied slaves  fell  on  the  iron  ears  of  spectators  with 
whom  the  throbs  of  pity  were  a  childish  weakness. 
If  the  moral  sentiment  found  cheap  utterance  in 
poetry,  or  in  moral  codes,  it  was  where  the  rights  of 
humanity  were  trampled  out  without  remorse.  "  I 
am  a  man  and  anything  pertaining  to  man  concerns 
me,"  brought  down  the  applause  of  a  Roman  theatre, 
where  the  day  after  the  groans  of  the  dying  gladiator 
might  have  been  applauded  with  equal  glee.  Ap- 
plauding noble  sentiments  in  the  theatre  was  the 
cheap  commendation  of  virtues  which  only  lived  in 
history.  A  play  of  Atticus  was  brought  out  dur- 
ing the  games,  and  some  passages  which  expressed 
hatred  of  tyranny  were  loudly  cheered.  This  was 
when  the  very  spirit  of  liberty  had  departed  and  the 
gloom  of  despotism  was  thickening  to  its  midnight ; 
and  Cicero  remarked  that  it  gave  him  sorrow  that 
the  people  employed  their  hands  in  clapping  at  a 
theatre  instead  of  defending  the  Republic.  Seneca 
could  write  charmingly  in  praise  of  poverty  and 
self-sacrifice.  "  What  have  you  done  with  the  tons 
of  gold  piled  up  in  your  cellars } "  came  back  to  him 
in  the  jeers  of  the  multitude. 

Tacitus,  who  saw  only  the  ruin  and  desolation, 
stands  as  one  under  a  midnight  sky,  whose  darkness 
has  fallen  as  a  continuous  blot  upon  the  landscapes. 
Human  nature  itself  is  in  decay  ;  virtue  has  died 
out ;  servility  and  rapacity  are  universal ;  despotism 
13 


194  I'HE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

has  become  a  necessity ;  and  he  describes  the  face  of 
things  as  if  he  were  the  last  man  who  stood  self-con- 
tained, wrapped  in  his  mantle  and  surveying  the 
ruins.  "  What  is  unknown,"  he  says,  "  is  thought 
grand  and  mighty  ;  but  no  longer  is  there  any  tribe 
beyond  us ;  nothing  but  waves  and  rocks,  and  Ro- 
mans fiercer  than  they,  whose  unrelenting  cruelty 
you  would  vainly  escape  by  obedience  and  good  be- 
havior. Plunderers  of  the  world,  after  the  land  fails 
from  their  ravage,  they  grope  into  the  sea^  being 
greedy  of  his  wealth  if  the  enemy  be  rich,  imbibing 
his  servility  if  he  be  poor  ;  men  whom  neither  East 
nor  West  can  satiate.  Alone  of  mankind  they  covet 
alike  men's  affluence  and  men's  indigence.  Theft, 
butchery,  and  robbery,  they  falsely  name  empire,  and 
where  they  make  a  desert  they  call  it  peace." 

On  such  a  field  as  this  Jesus  Christ  appeared, 
some  say  the  product  of  his  times.  He  must  have 
been  the  product  of  the  times,  very  much  as  a  Lap- 
land spring  bursting  from  the  bosom  of  an  arctic 
winter,  is  the  product  of  its  ice  and  snow.  Chris- 
tianity appears  in  the  next  century  in  the  form  of 
little  communions  called  churches,  emerging  as  a 
thousand  glittering  islets  out  of  this  sea  of  blackness, 
the  islets  enlarging  their  area  till  they  touched  each 
other  ;  very  much  as  the  geologists  say  Europe  rose 
from  the  deep,  first  in  spots  of  emerald  that  lay  as 
scattered  gems  on  a  wilderness  of  waters,  but  which 
grew  towards  each  other  till  they  formed  a  great  con 
tinent  clothed  in  luxuriant  £rreen. 


PART    II. 

HISTORIC     MEMORIALS. 


**  We  regard  them  as  a  child  might  regard  the  stars,  as  chance 
gparks  of  heavenly  light,  because  we  have  not  observed  the  law 
which  rules  their  order.  However  far  one  evangelist  might  have 
been  led  by  the  laws  of  his  own  mind,  it  requires  the  introduction  of 
a  higher  power  that  four  should  unconsciously  combine  to  rear  from 
different  sides  a  harmonious  and  perfect  fabric  of  Christian  truth."— 
Westcoit 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE   FOUR   GOSPELS   IN   ORGANIC   UNITY. 

''  I  ^HE  New  Testament  has  four  classes  of  writings 
-*-  which  we  must  carefully  distinguish :  the  biog- 
raphy of  Jesus  ;  the  history  of  the  churches  founded 
on  his  life  and  word  ;  letters  to  those  churches  for- 
mulating the  Christian  doctrine  ;  and  prophecy,  which 
forecasts  the  final  triumph  of  Christianity.  Every 
one  must  see,  however,  that  the  biography  contains 
the  revelation.  The  history,  the  letters,  and  the 
vision  of  prophecy,  are  commentaries  upon  it,  and  il- 
lustrations of  its  divine  power  in  its  operation  upon 
human  nature.  It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that 
the  commentaries,  however  important,  are  final  and 
exhaustive,  or  that  its  operation  may  not  still  be 
variant  and  progressive.  Indeed,  if  the  four  Gospels 
embody  a  Divine  Life,  and  the  Divine  Word  made 
flesh,  no  exposition  of  their  contents  can  be  taken  as 
final  and  exhaustive. 

The  relation  of  these  four  remarkable  biographies 
to  each  other,  and  especially  of  the  first  three  to  the 
fourth,  is  a  subject  which  has  been  investigated  with 
a   thoroughness   worthy   of  its   exceeding  interest. 


198  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Before  we  speak  of  their  connection  we  wish  to  say 

a  few  words  of  them  separately.^ 

The  order  of  time  in  which  they  were  written,  in 
the  opinion  of  most  critics  is  the  order  in  which  they 
stand  in  our  Canon.  Some  place  Mark  first,  but  gen- 
erally both  in  the  ancient  canon  and  the  modern,  not 
only  the  four  Gospels  but  all  the  books  of  the  New 
Testament  fall  into  the  order  as  we  have  them,  or 
nearly  so,  as  if  by  some  intuitive  discernment  of 
their  pervading  and  organic  unity.^ 

We  place  the  date  of  the  Gospels  of  Matthew  and 
Mark  not  far  from  each  other,  and  not  much  before 
the  year  60.  We  place  Luke's  Gospel  later,  and  not 
far  from  the  year  65.  These  dates  are  not  merely 
conjectural.  We  can  see  no  reason,  after  the  most 
searching  criticism,  for  adopting  any  statement  es- 
sentially different  from  that  of  Irenaeus  (a.  d.  170), 
which  agrees  in  the  main  with  that  of  Papias  (a.  d. 

1  It  is  no  part  of  our  plan  and  purpose  to  exhibit  at  large  the  his- 
torical evidence  for  the  synoptics.  We  give  what  we  consider  the 
fair  results  of  investigation.  For  the  process  the  reader  who  chooses 
may  read  Norton,  Fisher,  Tischendorf,  and  the  popular  work  of 
Westcott  on  The  Study  of  the  Gospels,  and  on  the  skeptical  side 
Davidson's  Introduction,  and  the  last  Leben  Jesu  of  Strauss.  It  will 
be  seen,  however,  that  to  establish  the  genuineness  of  the  fourth 
Gospel  is  to  prove  the  genuineness  of  all  the  others,  inasmuch  as  it 
supplements  and  so  far  indorses  them.  Lange's  learned  and  ex- 
haustive work  gives  the  matured  results  of  investigation  from  the 
orthodox  point  of  view. 

*  See  this  subject  finely  treated  in  Bernard's  Progress  of  Doctrine  , 
Bampton  Lectures,  pp.  231-236,  note. 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC   UNITY.     1 99 

116),  and  with  Clement  (a.  d.  200),  and  with  Origen 
(a.  d.  225).  John's  Gospel  must  be  placed  in  the 
last  quarter,  and  probably  in  the  last  decade  of  the 
first  century.  All  its  contents  confirm  the  state- 
ments of  Irenaeus  and  Clement,  that  John  wrote  it  at 
the  solicitation  of  his  friends  to  supply  a  growing 
want  in  the  Church  of  a  more  full  knowledge  of  tlie 
earlier  life  and  miracles  of  Jesus,  and  of  what  per- 
tained less  to  the  "  body  "  and  more  to  the  spirit  of 
his  religion. 

That  the  original  Matthew's  Gospel  was  written 
in  Hebrew,  and  that  ours  is  a  Greek  translation  of 
the  same,  is  generally  admitted  in  accordance  with 
the  early  tradition,  and  with  internal  evidence  in 
the  Hebraisms  which  are  found  in  it.  Mr.  Norton 
gives  cogent  reasons  for  beheving  that  the  first  two 
chapters  in  the  received  version  were  no  part  of 
the  original  Hebrew  Gospel,  but  were  compiled 
from  tradition,  and  given  first  as  a  preface  to  the 
Greek  translation,  to  satisfy  a  natural  craving  of  the 
reader  for  some  knowledge  of  the  birth  and  child- 
hood of  Jesus,  and  that  the  preface  found  its  way 
afterward  to  the  body  of  the  narrative,  as  it  inevitably 
would  do.  The  flight  into  Egypt  and  return  seem 
inconsistent  with  Luke  ;  the  intended  return  to  Beth- 
lehem as  if  that  were  His  home  and  not  Nazareth, 
seems  out  of  keeping  with  both  Gospels.  The  whole 
cast  of  the  narrative  up  to  the  third  chapter,  has  not 
the  usual  traces  of  Matthew's  pen,  which,  as  we  read 


2CX)  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

him,  has  a  rare  gift  for  historical  narration.  We  can- 
not agree,  however,  with  Mr.  Norton,  that  the  preface, 
even  though  not  Matthew's,  is  to  be  set  aside  as  of  no 
value.  We  think  it  has  very  great  value,  and  has 
just  the  authenticity  which  such  a  preface,  if  made 
soon  after,  would  be  likely  to  possess.  The  miracu- 
lous conception  and  birth  agree  with  Luke's  history, 
and  with  what  seems  to  have  been  the  uniform  belief 
among  the  personal  disciples  of  Jesus  while  his 
mother  was  yet  alive.  The  story  of  the  Magians 
might  have  been  a  variation  of  that  of  the  shep- 
herds mentioned  by  Luke,  or  it  might  have  been 
real  history ;  for  numerous  instances  might  be  cited 
to  show  that  angels  were  described  under  the  image 
of  a  guiding  star.  The  alleged  murder  of  the  chil- 
dren by  Herod  might  have  had  some  ground  of  fact. 
It  was  preserved  long  afterwards  in  the  traditions 
and  even  the  histories  of  his  bloody  reign,  for  a 
pagan  writer  of  later  date  plainly  refers  to  it  in  a 
passage  in  which  it  is  manifest  that  the  writer  had 
not  found  his  authority  in  the  New  Testament  but 
somewhere  else.^ 

Assuming  that  Matthew's  Gospel  proper  begins  with 
the  third  chapter,  and  with  the  words,  "  In  the  days  of 

1  The  passage  is  fron\  Macrobius,  a  writer  whose  date  is  not  far 
from  the  close  of  the  third  century,  and  is  as  follows :  "  Cum  audisset 
inter  pueros  quos  in  Syria  Herodes,  rex  Judaeorum,  intra  bimatutn 
juisit  inlerfeci,  filium  quoque  ejus  occisum,  ait :  Melius  est  Herodig 
porcum  esse,  quam  filium."  —  Saturnalia,  ii.  4. 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC   UNITY.     201 

Herod  appeared  John  the  Baptist,"  ^  it  proceeds  with 
a  unity  and  power  swelUng  on  to  its  close,  unmatched 
in  all  literature  for  its  simple  majesty.  We  cannot 
understand  the  state  of  mind  that  genders  such  crit- 
icisms as  those  of  Strauss  and  Schenkel.  Nothing 
shall  convince  us  that  here  is  not  an  eye-witness  of 
the  events  he  describes,  and  an  ear-witness  of  the  dis- 
courses he  reports ;  whose  mind  has  been  lifted  up 
and  greatened  by  the  subject-matter  beyond  all  ordi- 
nary inspiration.  It  is  the  highest  inspiration  where 
the  writer  entirely  disappears  in  his  theme,  and  such 
a  theme  as  this.  We  do  not  remember  a  personal 
allusion  or  the  expression  of  a  personal  feeling  of 
grief  or  admiration  thrown  in  by  the  writer  himself, 
as  if  such  things  were  profane  in  the  awful  hush  of 
emotion  produced  by  his  narrative.  The  discourses 
are  often  reported  at  length,  and  generally  in  their 
natural  connection  with  the  events  that  are  grouped 
so  as  to  synchronize  with  them.  The  opening  ser- 
mon on  the  mount  inaugurates  formally  the  public 
mmistry  of  Jesus  as  the  multitudes  thronged  about 

1  The  third  chapter  of  our  version  opens  :  "  In  those  days  Came 
John  the  Baptist  preaching  in  the  wilderness  of  Judaea."  In  what 
days  .''  The  text  just  before  relates  to  the  infancy  of  Jesus.  A  writer 
like  Matthew  would  hardly  leap  a  chasm  of  thirty  years  in  a  single 
paragraph  after  that  fashion.  It  ought  to  be  said,  however,  that  the 
preek  ei/  8e  rdXs  r)/xepais  has  in  narrative  more  latitude  of  construction, 
and  may  only  mean  "  in  course  of  time."  Supposing  that  Matthew 
compiled  rather  than  composed  the  preface,  and  afterwards  added  it 
to  his  history,  all  difficulties  would  vanish. 


202  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

him  throbbing  and  swaying  with  excitement,  expect* 
ing  the  first  summons  of  the  wonder-worker  to  battle 
for  his  temporal  kingdom,  when  the  words,  "  Blessed 
are  the  poor  in  spirit "  broke  on  the  ears  of  his  dis- 
ciples. The  discourse  that  followed  is  plainly  the 
report  of  an  earwitness,  and  none  of  it  could  have 
been  invented  afterwards  and  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Jesus  unless  human  wit  had  attainments  then  never 
reached  before  nor  since.  The  hush  of  the  soul  be- 
comes more  profound,  as  the  narrative  moves  on,  with 
almost  insupportable  grandeur  towards  the  consum- 
mation. It  is  plain  that  the  order  of  events  is  here 
preserved,  for  one  scene  leads  on  to  another  and  pre- 
pares the  way.  Who  that  did  not  hear  the  sentence 
of  doom  pronounced  upon  the  "  Scribes  and  Phari- 
sees, hypocrites,"  in  the  last  discourse  of  Jesus  that 
rang  through  the  temple  courts,  could  ever  have  re- 
ported it  as  Matthew  has  done }  And  who  that  did 
hear  it  and  have  those  words  burned  into  his  memory 
would  ever  forget  it }  And  who  that  did  not  hear  the 
discourse  that  followed  on  the  slopes  of  Olivet,  where 
the  scene  opens  up  to  the  eternal  judgment,  could  ever 
have  imagined  it }  And  with  what  natural  sequence 
do  the  scenes  of  Gethsemane,  of  the  trial,  and  of  Cal- 
vary hasten  on  !  "  The  fragmentary  character  of  these 
narratives  !  "  If  that  means  that  they  are  fragments 
out  of  the  whole  life  of  Jesus,  it  is  doubtless  true,  but 
we  cannot  imagine  a  work  better  arranged  for  unity 
of  impression  growing  deeper  to  the  end,  producing 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC  UNITY,     203 

Without  any  art  the  effect  of  the  highest  art,  than  we 
find  in  Matthew's  Gospel.  There  is  a  point  wliere 
human  passion  and  emotion,  having  gained  their 
height,  go  down  again  and  give  place  to  the  noon-day 
stillness  inspired  by  the  divine  presence.  That  state 
must  have  been  gained  by  Matthew  when  he  wrote 
his  description  of  the  crucifixion.  All  of  fear  and 
agony  that  can  wring  human  hearts  he  had  experi- 
enced as  an  eye-witness  of  the  scene ;  he  totally  dis- 
appears from  it  in  his  narrative.  To  call  his  history 
dramatic  would  be  borrowing  the  language  of  the 
stage.  It  is  dramatic  only  as  nature  is  in  those 
awful  moods  when  man  seems  as  nothing  before  the 
on-goings  of  Omnipotence.^ 

The  Gospel  of  Mark  we  regard  as  in  fact  the  Gos- 
pel of  Peter,  bearing  the  impress  of  what  may  well 
be  supposed  to  have  been  the  features  of  his  mind. 
Papias,  Clement,  and  Origen  are  excellent  authority 
for  ascribing  the  second  Gospel  virtually  to  this 
Apostle.  Papias  knew  and  conversed  familiarly  with 
the  personal  followers  of  Jesus.     "  I  made  it  a  point," 

1  Mr.  Norton  rejects  from  Matthew's  Gospel  a  passage  in  the  de- 
scription of  the  crucifixion  found  in  chap,  xxvii.,  verses  52,  53,  but 
without  a  shadow  of  external  authority.  "  Many  bodies  of  the  saints 
that  slept  arose."  If,  as  was  certainly  the  case  at  and  after  the  res- 
urrection of  Christ  and  long  after  his  ascension,  the  inner  sight  of  his 
followers  was  touched,  and  opened,  there  would  be  appearances  to 
them,  not  of  Christ  alone,  but  of  some  of  his  disciples  lately  deceased, 
not  in  their  natural,  but  spiritual  forms.  In  the  darkened  pneu- 
matology  of  the  times  they  would  inevitably  have  been  reported  as 
•*  coming  out  of  their  graves." 


204  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

he  says,  "  to  inquire  what  was  said  by  Andrew,  Pe- 
ter, or  Philip,  what  by  Thomas,  James,  John,  Matthew, 
or  any  other  of  the  disciples  of  our  Lord."  He  says 
he  was  informed  by  John  the  presbyter  that  Mark 
wrote  as  the  interpreter  of  Peter ;  and  Clement  says 
further  that,  being  the  companion  of  Peter,  he  was 
moved  by  the  hearers  of  the  latter  to  write  out  the 
substance  of  Peter's  sermons,  and  leave  them  a  mon- 
ument of  the  doctrine  thus  orally  communicated. 
This  agrees  with  the  traditions  of  the  Church  so 
early,  direct,  and  universal,  that  they  would  not  be 
mistaken,  and  it  agrees  with  the  contents  of  the 
second  Gospel.  Papias  says,  "Mark  wrote  with 
great  accuracy,"  but  not  "in  the  order  in  which  it 
was  spoken  and  done  by  our  Lord ; "  and  Clement 
says  it  had  Peter's  authority  for  being  read  in  the 
churches.^ 

The  second  Gospel,  then,  is  a  faithful  report  of 
Peter's  historical  discourses.  Of  course,  the  first 
preaching  would  be  fundamentally  historical.  Mark 
wrote  down  the  most  striking  and  important  things 
he  had  heard  in  Peter's  narratives,  and  strung  them 
together  separately  without  any  single  continuous  his- 
torical thread.  This  we  conceive  is  sufficient  to  ac- 
count for  the  character  of  the  book  and  for  its  abrupt 
close,  without  resorting  to  Mr.  Norton's  extraordinary 
and  improbable   hypothesis.^     For  there  can  be  no 

1  Eusebius,  H.  E.y  ii.  15  ;  iii.  39. 

**  Mr.  Norton  imagines  that  Peter  might  have  been  preaching  dur- 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC  UNITY,    205 

reasonable  doubt,  we  think,  that  the  best  critics  are 
right  —  among  whom  are  Norton  and  Tischendorf — 
in  saying  that  the  genuine  Mark  closes  with  the 
eighth  verse  of  the  sixteenth  chapter,  and  that  the 
following  twelve  verses  are  an  appendix  by  some 
later  hand. 

Conformably  to  this  early  history  of  the  second 
Gospel  we  find  it  a  series  of  most  vivid  historical 
pictures,  such  as  none  but  an  eye-witness  ever  could 
have  given.  It  has  no  such  majestic  sweep  and  flow 
as  we  find  in  Matthew,  and  while  it  gives  fragments 
only  of  the  discourses,  and  those  often  out  of  place, 
it  details  matters  of  fact  with  minute  and  graphic 
delineation,  but  with  no  subordination  of  parts  to  one 
great  idea.  Little  details  are  often  thrown  in  found 
nowhere  else,  which  could  not  possibly  have  come 
from  imagination,  but  from  reality  alone.  Peter's 
narrative  —  for  so  we  have  a  right  to  call  the  second 
Gospel  —  has  two  characteristics  which  are  quite 
peculiar.  It  gives  us  glimpses,  which  are  sometimes 
exceedingly  vivid,  of  the  personal  manner  of  Jesus  and 
the  expression  of  his  countenance.  Again,  incidents 
are  thrown  in,  very  homely  and  almost  unseemly  in 
their  nature,  which  others  leave  out,  and  which  no 
romancer  would  ever  have  inserted ;  for  instance,  the 
poor  demoniac  whom  Jesus  was  to  cure  lay  on  the 
ground  gnashing  his  teeth,  and  "  wallowed,  foaming  at 

ing  the  persecutions  of  Nero,  and  that  Mark  stopped  short  in  his 
report  when  Peter  was  arrested. 


206  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  mouth."  The  whole  seventh  chapter  is  intensely 
Petrine,  both  in  its  report  of  what  Jesus  said  to  the 
Pharisees  and  in  the  explanatory  passage  concerning 
their  customs  in  baptizing,  cups,  benches,  pots,  and 
kettles.^  The  second  Gospel  shows  that  the  narrator 
had  not  the  deepest  spiritual  insight  of  the  mean- 
ing of  his  own  story,  but  it  gives  us  the  most  exter- 
nal life  of  our  Saviour  with  every  mark  of  downright 
and  sturdy  honesty.  We  say,  with  every  chapter, 
these  things  were  seen  and  heard  on  this  earth,  and 
are  matters  of  fact,  and  not  of  imagination. 

Luke  was  not  an  eye-witness  of  what  he  relates, 
but  his  narrative  is  doubly  interesting  from  his 
having  been  the  companion  of  Paul.  There  was  an 
early  tradition  that  he  was  one  of  the  seventy,  which 
is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  he  alone  has  recorded 
their  mission  and  work.  There  is  evidence,  too,  that 
he  had  the  confidence  of  John,  and  that  he  relates 
things  upon  John's  authority.  This  evidence  is  so 
strong,  that  we  shall  consider  portions  of  his  history 
as  substantially  that  of  John.  We  will  state  the  evi- 
dence and  the  reader  can  judge. 

I.  No  historian,  of  the  rare  qualifications  which 
Luke  certainly  had,  would  be  likely  to  undertake 
such  a  work  as  the  third  Gospel  without  availing  him- 
self of  the  best  sources  which  he  could  command. 
But  there  are  portions  of  his  narrative,  as  we  shall 
see,  where  John  certainly  was  the  only  eye-witness, 

1  ix.  20 ;  vii.  1-23. 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC  UNITY.    20^ 

and  there  are  other  portions  where  this  was  probably 
the  case.  It  is  tolerably  certain  that  John  had  not 
left  Palestine  when  the  third  Gospel  was  written,  and 
we  positively  know  that  Paul  met  him  at  Jerusalem 
and  found  him  a  "  pillar  of  the  Church  "  very  near 
the  time  when  Luke  became  a  companion  of  Paul.-* 
It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  Luke  should  not  have 
been  brought  into  personal  intercourse  with  the 
disciple  who  had  the  most  intimate  relations  with 
Jesus. 

2.  Luke  in  his  preface,  more  than  intimates  that 
he  wrote  on  the  authority  of  eye-witnesses,  and  did 
not  receive  his  facts  at  second  hand.  "  Since  many," 
he  says,  "have  undertaken  to  arrange  a  narrative 
of  the  events  accomplished  among  us,  conform- 
ably to  the  accounts  given  us  by  those  who  were  eye- 
witnesses from  the  beginning,  and  have  become  min- 
isters of  the  Word,  /  Jiave  determined  also,  having 
accurately  informed  myself  of  all  things  from  the 
beginning,  to  write  a  connected  account  that  you 
may  know  the  truth  concerning  the  narrations  which 
you  have  heard."  ^  The  conclusion  is  tolerably  cer- 
tain that  he  wrote  on  the  testimony  of  men  whu 
heard    and  saw. 

3.  John  heard  and  saw  a  great  deal  which  ihe 
other  writers  did  not.  He  was  a  disciple  and  in- 
timate friend  of  Jesus,  as  we  shall  see,  for  a  year  or 
more  before  the  twelve  had  been  chosen.     He  trav- 


Gal  ii.  9,  10.  '^  Luke  i.  1-4. 


2o8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

clled  with  the  Master,  stayed  with  him  at  Nazareth, 
witnessed  his  miracles,  went  up  with  him  to  the  Jew- 
ish festivals,  and  heard  his  conversations  and  parables, 
some  time  before  Jesus  took  up  his  abode  at  Caper- 
naum. Any  writer  who  undertook  "  accurately  to 
inform  himself  of  all  things  from  the  beginning** 
and  report  thereon,  would  be  strangely  incompetent 
if  he  did  not  resort  to  John,  a  living  witness  close  at 
hand. 

4.  Mary  the  mother  of  Jesus,  was  the  adopted 
mother  of  John,  and  a  member  of  his  household  from 
the  day  of  the  crucifixion.  The  main  facts  in  the 
first  chapter  of  Luke  could  come  only  from  two 
possible  sources :  direct  special  revelation  or  the 
word  of  Mary.  Luke's  own  statement  precludes  the 
former  and  necessitates  the  latter,  and  strongly  im- 
plies his  intercourse  with  John  and  his  family.  His 
entire  introduction  relative  to  the  birth  of  Jesus  and 
the  Baptist  has  an  air  of  historic  certitude  in  details 
which  Matthew's  preface  has  not.  The  visit  of  Mary 
to  Elizabeth,  their  conversation  together  with  the 
whole  subject-matter,  are  what  women  who  had  been 
mothers,  and  such  mothers,  would  have  fondly  kept  in 
memory  and  related  afterward,  but  what  would  have 
originated  in  the  head  of  no  man  to  put  into  history. 
The  chapter  is  intensely  natural ;  the  angel  visits, 
under  all  the  circumstances,  are  not  unnatural  or 
incredible  ;  and  John  in  his  introduction,  gives  the 
spiritual  and  divine  side  of  the  same  series  of  facts 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC  UNITY.    2O9 

as  if  complementing  what  Luke  had  already  written. 
Moreover,  Luke's  account  of  the  childhood  of  Jesus, 
including  his  dispute  with  the  doctors  in  the  temple 
and  the  search  for  him  by  his  parents,  could  only  have 
come  from  his  mother.  Mary  might  have  been  liv- 
ing when  Luke  wrote  ;  but  whether  so  or  not,  John, 
adopted  as  her  son  under  circumstances  of  bereave- 
ment unparalleled  in  any  story  of  human  sorrow,  would 
be  the  person  to  whom  she  would  have  confided  such 
facts  as  are  detailed  in  Luke's  first  chapter  ;  and  any 
writer  must  have  been  strangely  remiss  and  careless 
if  writing  on  such  subjects  he  would  not  eagerly  avail 
himself  of  such  authority. 

5.  Luke  in  portions  of  his  narrative  is  intensely 
Johannean.  Where  he  relates  things  in  common 
with  Matthew  and  Mark,  there  is  a  general  indefinite- 
ness,  and  except  towards  the  close  a  want  of  his- 
torical order.  The  great  discourses  are  broken  up, 
and  striking  passages  from  them  combined  and  dis- 
tributed anew,  and  without  any  reference  to  the  time 
and  place  of  delivery.  Important  sayings  are  reported 
as  being  in  "  a  certain  place,"  or  "  a  certain  village,"  or 
"  one  day,"  or  "  one  of  those  days,"  or  "  one  day  as 
he  was  teaching."  Things  are  inserted  in  the  fore- 
part of  his  Gospel  which  belong  to  the  latter  part 
in  the  order  of  time.^  But  in  one  kind  of  narrative 
Luke  is  unrivalled.  Those  parables  which  search 
the  inner  hfe  most  thoroughly  and  go  to  the  deeper 

'  See  chap.  ix.  44,  51. 
14 


2IO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL 

hunger  and  thirst  of  the  soul,  are  reported  by  Luke 
alone ;  and  some  of  them  plainly,  all  of  them  pos- 
sibly, belong  to  that  section  of  the  ministry  of  Jesus 
which  antedates  the  residence  at  Capernaum,  but 
includes  the  sole  discipleship  of  John  and  one  or 
two  others  along  with  him.  There  are  five  of  these 
parables  preserved  only  by  Luke  :  the  Prodigal  Son, 
the  Unjust  Steward,  Dives  and  Lazarus,  the  Good 
Samaritan,  the  Pharisee  and  the  Publican.  They 
differ  from  the  parables  properly  so-called  and  freely 
reported  by  Matthew,  inasmuch  as  they  are  not 
drawn  from  the  analogies  of  nature  but  from  hu- 
man life,  sometimes  in  its  dearest  and  sweetest  re- 
lations, and  touch  a  tenderer  chord  of  sympathy 
and  love.  They  symbolize  a  more  intimate  relation 
between  the  heavenly  Father  and  the  human  child, 
and  they  represent  the  universal  brotherhood  of  the 
race.  The  beggar  in  Hades  resting  in  Abraham's 
bosom  ;  the  publican  justified  above  the  pharisee  ;  the 
man  robbed  and  half  murdered  in  the  city  of  priests, 
to  be  cared  for  by  the  despised  Samaritan,  show  un- 
mistakably the  Saviour  in  conflict  with  Judaism  in 
its  own  capital,  where  his  ministry  commenced  with 
John  and  one  or  two  others  as  his  fellow  disciples. 
They  show  Christianity  thoroughly  cleared  of  Juda- 
ism. These  parables,  where  it  is  divinely  embodied, 
could  have  come  only  through  an  eye  and  ear  wit- 
ness, and  they  are  most  congenial  with  the  spirit  of 
Johu. 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC   UNITY.     2 1  T 

6.  There  are  events  of  which  John  of  all  the 
twelve  was  the  sole  spectator  or  presumptively  so, 
and  which  Luke  reports  ;  and  though  elsewhere  he 
is  often  vague  and  fragmentary  he  is  wonderfully  dis- 
tinct and  graphic  here  and  has  the  scenic  minute- 
ness of  an  eye-witness.  We  cite  two  of  these  in- 
stances ;  one  given  by  the  other  synoptics  in  more 
general  terms,  the  other  omitted  altogether.^  Again, 
there  are  cases  where  Peter,  James,  and  John  were 
the  only  spectators  and  where  Luke's  narrative  is 
much  more  graphic  and  detailed  than  that  of  the 
two  other  synoptics  and,  twice  at  least,  lets  us  more 
interiorly  into  the  spirit  of  the  scene  in  the  very 
style  and  method  of  the  favorite  disciple.^ 

The  relation  of  the  first  two  Gospels  to  the  third 
and  the  first  three  to  the  fourth,  becomes  a  subject 
of  exceeding  interest  and  importance.  It  has  been 
the  common  method  to  study  these  four  biographies 
as  parallel.  How  much  we  may  be  confused  and 
nonplussed  by  any  such  attempt,  those  who  have 
used  the  "Harmonies"  can  bear  witness.  The 
Harmonies  leave  us  with  a  painful  impression  of 
fragments  jumbled  together,  but  not  joined.  The 
truth  is,  these  narratives  are  not  parallel,  and  cannot 
be  made  to  appear  such,  and  yet  taken  together  they 
have  a  unity  which  is  not  fortuitous  but  providential 
and  vital.     It  is  like  the  unity  between  the  body  and 

1  See  Luke  xxii.  63-71,  and  xxiii.  6-11,  and  26-44. 

2  See  Luke  ix.  28-36,  and  xxii.  41-46. 


212  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  soul  that  warms  and  inspires  it.  They  are  not 
parallel  but  introjacent,  and  the  more  we  study  them 
as  such  the  more  shall  we  see  that  organic  complete- 
ness and  correlation.  One  lies  within  another.  We 
begin  with  the  most  external,  —  the  sheer  natural  life 
of  Jesus,  —  and  we  are  carried  successively  to  the 
heavenly  and  thence  the  divine  heights  of  his  being. 
Matthew  and  Mark  dwell  upon  the  ultimate  facts, 
describe  the  outward  life,  the  physical  sufferings  and 
death  of  Jesus.  They  do  it  with  graphic  power  and 
more  than  Doric  simplicity,  as  only  an  eye-witness 
could.  It  is  true  they  do  more  than  this.  But  the 
humanity  of  Jesus  is  put  foremost  and  made  in- 
tensely real,  and  the  first  two  Gospels  seldom  tell  us 
anything  which  an  outside  looker-on  could  not  have 
reported.^  Luke,  on  the  other  hand,  relates  with 
much  detail  his  supernatural  conception  and  birth ; 
and  he  reports  sayings  of  Christ  without  regard  to 
chronological  order,  often  with  reference  to  some 
other  series  of  doctrine  or  some  other  province  of 
duty.  And  he  gives  us  entire  discourses  and  para- 
bles, as  we  have  shown,  which  reflect  the  mind  of 
Jesus  in  more  spiritual  hues,  and  the  relation  of  all 
men  to  God  in  a  more  intimate  and  filial  communion. 
But  in  the  fourth  Gospel  we  are  carried  up  to  the 
divine  heights  of  the  being  of  Jesus.  We  enter 
the  "  circle  within  the  circles."     Things  are  related 

^  The  account  of  the  temptation,  and  the  agony  in  the  garden,  are 
exceptions,  Malt.  iv.  i-ii,  and  xxvi.  39-45- 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC   UNITY.     213 

which  serve  to  complement  what  had  gone  before, 
supplying  from  the  divine  side  of  his  being,  that  which 
gives  congruity  to  the  whole.  It  is  not  credible  that 
a  child  should  be  brought  into  this  world  without 
any  human  father,  and  the  statement  of  Matthew's 
preface  or  Luke's  genealogy  standing  alone  is  be- 
yond the  grasp  of  rational  thought.  John's  Proem 
gives  us,  however,  the  same  fact  seen  on  the  thither 
or  divine  side,  and  if  one  is  true  the  other  must  in- 
evitably be.  One  is  only  the  basis  or  earth-side  of  a 
transcendent  divine  reaUty  which  alone  can  glorify 
it,  and  make  it  a  perfect  living  whole,  only  to  take  on 
the  ghastliness  of  death  by  being  picked  in  pieces. 

There  is  a  wonderful  Providence  in  the  formation 
and  development  of  the  Christian  canon  of  Scripture. 
What  the  nascent  Church  needed  first  of  all  things  to 
know  was  the  fundamental  facts,  the  natural  life,  so  to 
say,  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  This  is  what  the  ear- 
liest preachers  would  at  first  be  at  pains  to  present. 
Little  else  would  then  be  hkely  to  be  understood. 
The  Apostles  would  not  begin  the  grand  fabric  of 
Christian  doctrine  at  the  top  and  build  downward  to 
the  ground  ;  they  would  begin  at  the  ground  and 
build  upward  into  the  skies.  Hence  the  striking 
,rerbal  coincidence  between  Matthew  and  Mark,  as  if 
the  Apostles  had  been  accustomed  to  recite  to  their 
hearers  over  and  over  again  the  fundamental  facts  in 
the  biography  of  Christ,  until  the  very  words  had  be- 
come stereotyped  in  their  memories.     The  new  con- 


214  ^^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

verts,  whether  Jewish  or  heathen,  would  need  at  the 
start  to  be  thoroughly  possessed  with  that  biography 
as  exhibited  to  the  senses,  "  what  the  eyes  had  seen 
and  the  hands  handled  of  the  Word  of  Life."  How 
absolutely  necessary  this  was  is  shown  by  the  base- 
less and  fantastic  speculations  of  Gnosticism  which 
soon  followed,  which  ignored  the  natural  life  of  Jesus 
altogether,  and  which  would  have  made  Christianity 
only  a  gorgeous  and  ever-shifting  cloud-castle  float- 
ing in  air.  That  the  Church  should  have  begun  with 
the  fourth  Gospel,  and  ended  with  the  first,  is  not 
conceivable.  That  it  should  have  begun  with  the 
first,  and  from  its  secure  foundations  been  drawn  up 
to  the  celestial  and  divine  heights  of  the  third  and 
fourth,  accords  with  the  facts  of  the  case  and  the 
nature  of  things. 

And  it  accords  with  our  individual  experience. 
We  learn  Christ  after  the  flesh  before  we  learn  him 
spiritually  and  divinely.  We  must  see  him  and 
know  him  on  the  side  of  his  natural  humanity,  a 
partaker  of  our  nature,  a  sharer  of  all  our  woes  and 
sufferings,  or  he  will  not  touch  our  human  sympa- 
thies and  our  tenderest  love.  But  we  are  not  likely 
to  rest  here.  That  it  is  not  merely  the  carpenter's 
son  who  has  found  us  and  melted  the  flint  from  our 
hearts  by  such  friendship  and  philanthropy,  and  such 
self-abnegation  as  the  world  had  not  known,  we  be- 
gin already  to  perceive,  and  when  the  fourth  Gospel 
draws  us  upward  to  a  vision  of  his  unveiled  divinity, 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS   IN  ORGANIC  UNITY,    215 

and  oneness  with  the  Godhead,  we  are  made  con- 
scious of  no  incongruity  in  his  h'fc  and  character, 
but  rather  of  their  majestic  proportions  and  har- 
mony. 

How  utterly  futile  the  objection  becomes,  that  the 
fourth  Gospel  omits  things  which  are  contanied  in 
the  first  and  second,  and  contains  very  important 
matters  which  we  miss  in  the  others,  must  be  obvious 
from  these  considerations.  Why  should  John  repeat 
what  he  knew  the  churches  already  possessed,  un- 
less for  the  purpose  of  showing  its  relation  to  a 
higher  series  of  truth  and  doctrine,  which  he  some- 
times does ;  or  why  should  Matthew,  or  Peter  through 
Mark  his  amanuensis,  undertake  to  pour  all  the  treas- 
ures of  the  new  revelation  upon  minds  just  opening 
towards  it  out  of  Jewish  formalism  and  heathen  su- 
perstition }  The  objection  too  that  each  of  the  four 
Evangelists  has  his  own  pecuHar  style,  and  that  the 
fourth  Gospel  throughout  is  chromatic  with  some 
mind  and  genius  altogether  foreign  to  the  other  three, 
not  only  is  without  validity,  but  suggests  a  most  won- 
derful and  providential  guidance.  Each  writer,  of 
course,  would  select  and  give  forth  that  in  the  life  of 
the  Master  which  was  most  in  adaptation  to  his  own 
mind  and  capacity  to  receive  and  reproduce,  —  and 
Peter  of  all  others  would  be  the  man  to  set  forth  the 
ultimate  facts  and  physical  environment ;  the  life  of 
Christ  as  addressed  to  the  senses  of  men.  Hence 
his  Gospel  has  such  an  air  of  reality  that  Schenkel, 


2l6  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

who  sees  Christ  only  as  a  man  of  natural  growth  and 
development,  receives  only  Mark  as  an  authentic 
book,  though  the  external  evidence  is  not  a  whit 
stronger  than  that  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  John  of 
all  others  would  be  the  man  to  set  forth  the  inmost 
series  both  of  fact  and  doctrine  pertaining  to  the  life 
of  Jesus  ;  to  describe  the  new  temple  of  truth,  not 
in  its  outer  courts  and  granitic  foundations,  but  in 
the  holy  of  holies,  where  the  glories  of  the  Highest 
are  without  symbol  and  veil. 

The  writer  just  referred  to,  in  his  attempted  "  por- 
traiture of  Jesus,"  rejects  the  fourth  Gospel  as  un- 
historic.  In  that  shuddering  dread  of  supernatural 
light  which  characterizes  minds  of  his  class,  he  rules 
out  this  book  as  the  work  of  some  fabricator  of  the 
second  century  tinged  with  the  Gnostic  theosophy. 
Only  Mark  is  authentic.  But  the  writer  becomes 
conscious  that  his  portraiture  must  be  incomplete 
from  Mark  alone.  He  sees  even  from  his  point  of 
view  that  here  is  a  foundation  whose  superstructure 
towers  into  the  tranquil  heavens  beyond  the  clouds 
that  hide  it,  and  quite  beyond  his  view,  and  he  is 
compelled  after  all  to  resort  to  a  book  which  he  had 
rejected  as  unhistoric  and  spurious,  in  order  to  pre- 
sent the  life  he  is  depicting  in  its  symmetrical  and 
crowning  perfections.  He  says  of  the  writer  of  the 
fourth  Gospel,  '*  He  has  elevated  into  the  region  of 
eternal  thought,  and  invested  with  the  transfiguring 
glory  of  a  later  century,  a  selection  of  reminiscences 


l^HE  FOUR   GOSPELS  IN  ORGANIC   UNITY.     2\J 

from  the  Christian  traditions,  taken  out  of  the  frame- 
work of  their  history  in  time.  He  has  done  this 
with  an  understanding  of  the  interior  being,  and  the 
loftiest  aim  of  the  hfe  of  Jesus,  as  it  could  not  have 
been  done  at  an  eariier,  and  morally  considered,  nar- 
rower time.  The  fourth  Gospel,  therefore,  serves  as 
a  really  historical  authority,  for  the  representation  of 
the  moral  being  of  Jesus,  but  in  a  high  and  spiritual 
sense  of  the  word.  Without  this  Gospel,  the  un- 
fathomable depth,  the  inaccessible  height  of  the  idea 
of  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  would  be  wanting  to  us, 
and  his  boundless  influence,  ever  renewing  our  col- 
lective humanity,  would  ever  remain  a  riddle.  In 
the  several  particulars  of  his  development,  Jesus 
Christ  was  not  what  the  fourth  Evangelist  paints 
him  ;  but  he  was  that  in  the  height  and  depth  of 
his  influence;  he  was  not  always  that  actualized, 
but  he  was  that  in  truth.  The  first  three  Gospels 
have  shown  him  to  us  still  wrestling  with  earthly 
powers  and  forces.  The  fourth  Gospel  portrays  the 
Saviour  glorified  in  the  victorious  power  of  the  spirit 
over  his  earthly  nature.  The  former  show  us  the 
son  of  Israel,  struggling  in  his  humanity  up  towards 
heaven  ;  the  latter  the  King  of  Heaven,  who  de- 
scends full  of  grace  from  the  throne  of  eternity  into 
the  world  of  men.  Our  portraiture  of  him  must 
not  disregard  the  natural,  earthly  foundation  of  the 
first  three  Gospels  if  it  aims  to  be  historically  real  ; 
but  It  can  be  an  image  of  Jesus,  eternally  true  on)y 


2l8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

in  the  heavenly  splendor  of  the  light  which  streams 
Trom  the  fourth  Gospel." 

This  writer  will  not  believe  that  John,  who  leane<i 
on  the  Saviour's  breast,  has  described  most  perfectly 
"  his  interior  being,  and  the  loftiest  aim  of  his  life," 
but  that  some  writer  not  yet  released  from  heathen 
superstitions,  Uving  nearly  a  century  afterward,  has 
done  this  out  of  the  legend  and  fable  that  came  down 
to  him.  The  Christ  that  changed  the  course  of  his- 
tory, and  that  moves  the  heart  of  the  world  in  its 
profoundest  deeps,  is  not  the  Christ  as  he  lived  and 
acted  in  Palestine,  but  as  an  unknown  writer  of  the 
second  century  has  produced  him  from  unveracious 
traditions  and  from  his  own  ideals ! 

This  is  the  miracle  we  are  to  believe  in  order  to 
void  the  miracles  of  the  New  Testament.  This  un- 
designed and  unconscious  homage  to  the  overwhelm- 
ing internal  evidence  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  and  to  its 
essentia]  place  in  a  seamless  whole,  is  vastly  signifi- 
cant. We  shall  be  relieved  of  much  needless  diffi- 
culty when  we  are  willing  to  think  that  an  inter- 
working  Providence  had  something  to  do  in  the 
canon  of  the  New  Testament,  in  the  order  of  its  for- 
mation, in  the  constitution  and  arrangement,  espe- 
cially of  these  four  wonderful  biographies,  and  their 
growth  into  organic  unity  in  such  wise  that  each  de- 
mands and  complements  the  others  ;  one  within  an- 
other, like  circles  convergent  towards  an  illuminated 
centre. 


THE  FOUR   GOSPELS  EV  ORGANIC   UNITY.    219 

It  is  often  said  that  the  four  Gospels  do  not  con- 
tani  any  system  of  theology,  and  that  Jesus  never 
taught  any.  If  this  means  only  that  he  did  not  draw 
up  a  set  of  articles,  it  is  certainly  true.  But  the  sys- 
tem is  there,  too  vast  for  us  to  make  a  model  of  for 
exhibition,  and  all  the  more  impressing  us  with  a 
sense  of  the  divine  order  that  reigns  through  it. 
You  might  as  well  say  that  there  is  no  system  of 
nature,  because  the  ocean-shores  are  not  geomet- 
ric curves  ;  because  the  rivers  are  not  canals  ;  or  be- 
cause the  constellations  are  not  grouped  in  regular 
figures,  which  children  can  count  off  or  copy  in  their 
diagrams.  It  is  a  fact  exceedingly  suggestive,  that 
those  who  have  attempted  to  make  out  a  life  of  Christ 
and  reduce  him  to  our  human  proportions,  sifting  out 
everything  which  cannot  be  accounted  for  after  the 
fashion  of  our  common  experience,  or  leaving  out 
everything  which  cannot  be  defined  in  human  creeds 
and  propositions,  make  their  readers  painfully  aware, 
if  they  do  not  become  so  themselves,  that  Christian- 
ity in  its  subtile  and  vital  essence  has  eluded  theii 
analysis  ;  that  the  Christ  of  their  books  is  one  of 
their  own  invention. 


CHAPTER  II. 

JESUS  OF  MATTHEW  IS  THE  LOGOS  OF  JOHN. 

"TV  /r  ATTHEW  and  Mark  dwell  primarily  on  the 
■^^ -^  humanity  of  Jesus  ;  but  his  natural  life  is  not 
described  as  unfolding  under  conditions  which  are 
merely  normal.  It  is  described  as  the  ground  and 
the  ultimate  manifestation  of  a  life  which  is  more 
than  human.  Not  only  in  what  Jesus  teaches  but  in 
his  manner  of  teaching  this  is  always  to  be  observed. 
He  speaks  with  that  tone  of  command  and  authority 
which,  with  men  giving  their  natural  intuitions  or 
the  deductions  of  their  private  reason,  would  be 
intolerably  offensive.  The  sermon  on  the  mount 
amazed  his  hearers,  not  so  much  on  account  of  its 
subject-matter,  as  on  account  of  his  method  and 
tone,  for  he  appealed  not  to  the  law  and  the 
prophets  for  his  proof-texts,  as  the  scribes  were 
wont  to  do,  but  made  his  utterance  out  of  that 
original  divine  sovereignty  whence  law  and  prophets 
derive  their  authority.  What  to  him  were  Moses 
or  Solomon,  —  "a  greater  than  Solomon  is  here." 
Mark  dwells  less  than  either  of  the  synoptics  on  the 
proper  divinity  of  Christ ;  but  all  through  his  narra- 
tive there  is  an  air  and  manner  on  the  part  of  the 


JESUS  OF  MA  TTHE  W  THE  LOGOS  OF  JOHN.    22 1 

subject  of  it  which  would  be  intolerable  self-assump- 
tion for  Moses  or  Solomon,  or  for  any  prophet  or 
lawgiver,  and  which  presuppose  a  divine  epiphany 
in  Jesus.^  We  can  cool  down  these  passages  by  a 
process  of  criticism  into  figure  and  rhetoric,  but  the 
whole  air  and  method  will  remain,  and  they  are 
such  as  fit  in  with  the  natural  coursings  of  no 
human  biography  before  or  since. 

But  we  come  now  to  remark  another  of  the  bold- 
est characteristics  of  Matthew's  Gospel.  If  we  im- 
agine that  because  Matthew  was  concerned  primarily 
with  the  humanity  of  Christ,  he  was  forgetful  of  his 
divinity,  and  presents  him  to  us  as  a  fine  specimen 
of  the  best  culture  of  his  times,  we  shall  not  read 
far  before  we  find  our  imagination  melting  away. 
Not  merely  Jesus  but  the  Christ  —  the  Christ  of  au- 
thority from  above  —  is  presented  with  a  sharpness 
and  boldness  made  more  uncompromising  by  the  in- 
tense realism  of  the  first  Gospel.  Many  illustrations 
of  this  fact  are  crowding  upon  us,  but  we  will  select 
only  three. 

I.  The  doctrine  of  John's  Proem  is  explicitly  as- 
serted in  Matt.  xi.  27.  After  rebuking  the  cities 
where  his  Word  had  been  delivered  and  his  works  had 
been  done,  Jesus  tells  them  that  their  guilt  in  reject- 
ing him  was  greater  than  the  guilt  of  Sodom,  and 
that  it  would  be  more  tolerable  for  Sodom  in  the  day  of 

1  Read,  for  instance,  Mark  i.  7-1 1 ;  ii.  10,  28 ;  viii.  38  ;  xii.  35-37  j 
jiii.  26,  27 ;  xiv.  62 ;  xv.  2. 


222  THE  FOUKTIT  GOSPEL. 

judgment.  Then  falling  into  a  strain  of  indescribable 
tenderness,  he  subjoins :  "  All  things  are  delivered 
unto  me  of  my  Father,  and  no  man  knoweth  the  Son 
but  the  Father,  neither  knoweth  any  man  the 
F'ather,  save  the  Son,  and  He  to  whomsoever 
THE  Son  will  reveal  Him.  Come  unto  mk  all  ye 
that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you 
rest."  It  has  been  asserted  that  the  Logos-doctrine 
is  peculiar  to  John.  We  find  it  not  so,  but  only  its 
metaphysical  form  of  statement.  It  is  set  forth  here 
in  Matthew,  with  a  clearness  which  no  human  lan- 
guage can  improve  upon,  coupled  with  invitations 
out  of  the  very  heart  of  the  Divine  mercy  which  no 
fabricator  would  invent  or  imagine. 

2.  Christ,  as  the  judge  of  men,  is  unquestionably 
the  burden  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  But  if  found  in 
John  asserted  in  more  metaphysical  language,  it  is 
found  in  Matthew  drawn  out  with  more  than  dra- 
matic power,  and  with  a  sublimity  unsurpassed  any- 
where in  the  New  Testament.  And  it  is  not  found 
in  Matthew  as  exceptional  as  if  some  interpolater  had 
put  it  in.  It  is  found  at  the  conclusion  of  the  dis- 
course from  the  heights  of  Olivet,  when,  as  the 
doomed  city  lay  at  his  feet,  the  vast  future  opened  to 
the  eye  of  Jesus,  even  to  the  retributions  of  an  eter- 
nal world.  The  discourse  rises  in  grandeur  to  the 
final  announcement,  "When  the  Son  of  Man  shall 
come  in  his  glory  and  all  the  holy  angels  with  him, 
then  shall  he  sit  upon  the  throne  of  his  glory.     And 


JESUS  OF  MATTHEW  THE  LOGOS  OF  JOHN.     223 

before  him  shall  be  gathered  all  nations,  and  he 
shall  separate  them  one  from  another  as  a  shepherd 
divideth  his  sheep  from  the  goats."  There  is  no 
such  passage  as  this  in  the  fourth  Gospel.  The  same 
doctrine  is  variously  asserted.  The  incarnate  Word 
is  to  be  the  Judge  of  men.  "All  who  are  in  the 
graves  shall  hear  his  voice,  and  shall  come  forth." 
But  it  is  stated  in  a  more  colloquial  and  supplemen- 
tary way,  and  is  no  more  than  a  commentary  on  the 
grand  and  sustained  utterance  from  Mount  Olivet 
reported  in  the  first  Gospel. 

3.  But  there  is  another  passage,  if  possible  still 
more  significant,  in  the  first  Gospel,  asserting  the 
Divinity  of  Christ  with  a  power  to  which  neither 
John  nor  any  other  writer  has  given  any  additional 
strength.  It  is  the  final  charge  of  Jesus  to  his  dis- 
ciples, involving  the  formula  of  baptism.  It  was  given 
as  Matthew  reports,  at  the  last  post-resurrection  ai> 
pearance  of  Jesus  to  his  disciples.  "All  power  is 
given  unto  me  in  heaven  and  in  earth.  Go  ye  there- 
fore and  teach  all  nations,  baptizing  them  in  the 
name  of  the  Father  and  the  Son  and  the  Holy 
Ghost,  teaching  them  to  observe  all  things  whatso- 
ever I  have  commanded  you  :  and  lo  !  I  am  with  you 
alway,  even  to  the  end  of  time."     (rov  aiwi/o?.) 

The  passages  we  have  cited  are  not  exceptional  in 
Matthew's  Gospel,  but  with  others  of  similar  import 
they  connect  themselves  organically  with  the  whole 
narrative.     The  fact  then  stands  thus :  that  the  tirst 


224  Tim  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Gospel  dwells  primarily  on  the  humanity  of  Jesus,  for 
it  comes  first  in  the  order  of  time.  The  whole  doc- 
trine of  the  incarnation  is  baseless  without  it,  and 
would  only  be  a  Gnostic  theosophy  floating  in  air. 
But  Matthew,  in  consequence  of  those  very  qualities 
of  his  mind  and  style  which  give  his  narrative  this 
intense  and  uncompromising  reaHsm,  has  also  made 
the  Divinity  of  Christ  stand  out  with  corresponding 
distinctness  of  outline.  John  writes  thirty  years 
afterwards  with  the  synoptics  before  him,  professedly 
to  complete  them.  He  does  complete  them,  not  un- 
dertaking to  lay  the  foundations  anew,  but  telling  us 
a  great  deal  about  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  which  ex- 
plains, illustrates,  and  enlarges  what  the  others  had 
reported,  showing  the  sublime  peaks  of  doctrine 
which  they  had  left  in  rugged  outline,  bathed  in  a 
sweeter  and  softer  splendor  from  the  morning  sky. 

If  the  reader,  however,  is  in  any  doubt  as  to 
whether  the  Jesus  of  the  first  Gospel  is  the  Christ 
of  the  fourth,  if  he  thinks  the  first  may  be  a  man  de- 
veloped like  other  men  out  of  the  culture  of  his  times, 
while  the  other  was  the  factitious  invention  of  a  later 
day,  he  can  easily  bring  this  matter  to  the  test 
Summon  the  best  man  you  can  find,  the  most  ad- 
vanced prophet  of  to-day,  and  let  him  stand  in  the 
position  of  this  same  Jesus,  the  mere  man  of  the  first 
Gospel.  Let  him  see  if  he  can  grasp  his  thunders. 
Let  some  prophet  of  to-day  who  ought  to  have  grown 
up  to  the  stature  of  Jesus,  —  the  mere  human  devel- 


JESUS  OF  MATTHEW  THE  LOGOS  OF  JOHN.     225 

opnient,  declare  in  the  face  of  the  world  that  no 
man  knoweth  the  Father  but  himself,  and  those  to 
whom  he  shall  reveal  him  ;  let  him  assume  to  sit 
on  a  throne  of  glory  with  all  the  holy  angels 
around  him,  and  part  the  nations  to  the  right  hand 
and  the  left,  to  everlasting  punishment  or  to  life  eter- 
nal ;  let  him  announce  that  all  power  is  given  to  Jibn 
both  in  heaven  and  earth  ;  let  him  put  his  own  name 
into  a  formula  of  baptism,  and  charge  his  followers  to 
make  disciples,  in  the  name  of  the  Father  and  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  —  himself.  Would  the  world  be  con- 
verted by  such  preaching  at  the  rate  of  three  thou- 
sand in  a  day ;  or  would  they  regard  it  as  self-conceit 
and  self-assertion,  passed  into  the  stage  of  monoma- 
nia, and  fit  only  for  an  asylum  for  the  insane  ? 
"5 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE    MYSTERY    OF    BIRTH. 

T3  IRTH,  from  any  view  we  can  take  of  it,  is  a  pro- 
-^  found  mystery.  There  are  two  kinds.  There 
is  the  birth  of  species,  or  ascent  from  a  lower  plane 
to  a  higher  one  ;  and  there  is  the  propagation  of  the 
same  species  successively  on  the  same  plane  of  ex- 
istence. In  the  former,  the  Divine  power  operates 
immediately  through  the  matrices  of  nature  ;  in  the 
latter,  through  finite  parentage.  That  any  new  spe- 
cies or  new  style  of  life  was  started  mechanically  by 
the  Creator,  or  "  made  out  of  nothing,"  not  only 
shocks  the  reason,  but  lacks  all  confirmation  in 
any  known  facts  of  natural  history.  Theology  is 
strangely  fearful  lest  the  Darwinian  hypothesis  of 
development  should  sink  us  in  atheism.  Should  it 
ever  be  verified  it  would  only  be  to  write  out  a  chap- 
ter of  a  new  book  of  Genesis,  wonderfully  confirming 
the  old  one,  showing  in  succession  the  birth  of  spe- 
cies, and  the  ascent  through  six  days  of  creation  till 
man  appeared  upon  the  earth. 

Nature  only  affords  matrices  for  the  all-fructifying 
spirit.  If  we  attempt  to  trace  to  its  beginning  a  new 
type  of  life  we  find,  of  necessity,  that  it  abuts  upon 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  BIRTH.  22/ 

sometbiug-  both  higher  and  lower  than  itself.  On  the 
natural  side  it  has  been  produced  from  something 
lower ;  animal  life,  for  instance,  has  been  evolved 
from  vegetable.  But  to  suppose  that  the  vegetable 
kingdom  inoimted  tip  of  itself  into  the  animal,  would 
be  to  shock  the  reason  more  violently  than  the  most 
mcclianical  and  potter-like  theology  has  ever  done. 
The  same  is  to  be  said  of  the  assumption  that  ani- 
mals climbed  up  into  manhood,  the  monkeys  rubbing 
off  their  tails,  and  otherwise  improving  their  condition, 
till  they  found  themselves  spiritual  beings  possessing 
immortal  souls.  But  the  idea  that  the  human  species 
at  its  origin  abuts  upon  something  both  higher  and 
lower  than  itself,  seems  almost  a  necessity  of  the 
reason  ;  upon  the  matrices  of  a  lower  life  in  its  se- 
lectest  forms  on  the  natural  side,  and  on  the  paternal 
side  on  nothing  less  than  the  brooding  Spirit  of  God. 
Development  from  lower  to  higher  species  is  not  self- 
evolution.  Every  creation  of  a  new  type  of  being  is 
a  conception  and  a  birth,  having  only  nature  on  the 
maternal  side,  and  the  immanent  Deity  on  the  pa- 
ternal necessitating  no  finite  fatherhood  between. 
Suppose,  then,  it  should  turn  out  as  one  of  the 
discoveries  of  natural  science  that  man  was  not 
manufactured  de  novo  by  direct  interposition  of  God, 
but  that  there  is  a  vast  system  of  evolution  climbing 
a]3\vard,  from  the  nebula  to  the  mineral,  from  the 
mineral  to  the  plant,  from  the  plant  to  the  animal, 
and  from  the  animal  to  man,  —  the  frlorious  flower  of 


228  777i?  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  whole  opening  upward  into  the  light  of  immor- 
tality, for  whom  everything  beneath  serves  only  as 
root  and  stem,  I  can  conceive  of  nothing  more  wor- 
thy of  the  Divine  wisdom  and  omnipotence.  And 
that  wisdom  is  none  the  less  adorable  that  its  creation 
rises  not  through  breaks  and  divisions  where  we  can 
insert  our  dissecting  knives,  but  in  unfolding  grace 
and  order  as  the  seed  rises  up  into  the  palm  tree, 
and  then  flowers  forth  towards  the  sunbeams. 

Every  new  type  of  life  draws  up  into  itself  the  next 
lower  one,  including  that  and  —  something  more. 
The  mineral  is  not  the  nebula,  but  it  takes  the  neb- 
ula into  its  organic  structure  ;  the  plant  is  not  the 
mineral,  but  it  draws  up  the  mineral  into  its  compo- 
sition ;  the  animal  is  not  a  vegetable,  but  he  takes  up 
the  vegetable,  and  decomposes  it  in  a  higher  vitality ; 
man  is  not  an  animal,  but  he  must  take  up  and  in- 
clude the  animal  as  the  basis  and  background  of 
spiritual  existence.  Each  includes  what  is  below  it 
and  something  more,  and  that  something  more  comes 
from  above  nature,  unless  the  stream  can  mount 
higher  than  its  source,  and  unless  all  our  talk  about 
the  nexus  of  cause  and  effect  is  without  meaning. 
And  if  it  be  true  that  man  was  not  extemporized  by 
his  Creator,  but  that  a  million  years  were  employed 
in  making  him,  we  do  not  see  that  the  workmanship 
is  any  the  less  wonderful  and  superb  on  that  account, 
for  what  are  a  million  years  but  as  the  tick  of  a  watch 
in  the  eternity  of  God  ? 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  BIRTH,  22<) 

Climbing  up  from  these  analogies  we  are  ready  to 
say  that  if  a  higher  type  of  hfe  than  the  human,  in- 
cluding that  and  something  more,  is  to  be  produced 
upon  this  earth,  it  will  not  probably  descend  exter- 
nally out  of  heaven,  and  stand  among  us  in  its  insu- 
lation. Neither  again  will  it  be  manufactured.  It 
will  be  born.  And  it  will  be  born  of  the  brooding 
Spirit  of  God  on  the  paternal  side  and  of  our  human 
nature  on  the  maternal,  with  no  finite  fatherhood  in- 
tervening, and  the  product  of  such  conception  and 
birth  would  be  a  style  of  Divine  Life  into  which 
men  do  not  develop  by  natural  progress  and  self- 
improvement,  but  which  would  express  to  them  more 
completely  and  openly  the  moral  perfections  and  glo- 
ries of  the  Godhead. 

This  is  precisely  what  three  of  the  New  Testament 
writers  affirm  respecting  the  birth  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Two  of  them  affirm  it  mainly  from  the  natural  or 
maternal  side,  one  of  them  from  the  supernatural  and 
divine.  It  is  easy  to  do  this.  Other  writers  had 
done  like  things  before,  putting  in  the  claim  of  super- 
natural parentage  and  birth  for  the  heroes  of  their 
narratives.  But  they  do  it  at  their  peril.  The  prog- 
ress and  the  ending  of  such  a  life  must  answer  to  its 
beginning,  and  be  congenerous  with  it.  He  who  puts 
up  such  a  porch  as  this  imposes  upon  himself  the 
task  of  making  the  building  correspond  to  it.  If  he 
resorts  to  invention  and  imagination  at  the  begin- 
ning, so  he  must  in  the  progress  and  the  ending,  and 


230  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

he  is  perfectly  sure  to  overwhelm  himself  with  confu- 
sion and  disgrace.  For  a  man  can  no  more  imagine 
and  depict  out  of  his  own  subjective  state  a  style  of 
life  organically  above  it  and  divinely  human  than  he 
could  himself  beget  it  or  create  it.  To  say  that  he 
could  pre-determine  and  describe  the  hero  of  such  a 
narrative,  would  be  saying  that  he  was  himself  the 
hero,  or  else  that  he  occupied  the  same  plane  of 
existence  with  him.  An  elephant  or  a  monkey  could 
have  just  as  easily  imagined  what  was  to  be  the  style 
of  human  life  before  man  existed  on  the  earth.  And 
so  we  find  that  before  the  birth  of  Jesus  Christ  all 
the  stories  of  heroes  with  pretended  superhuman 
birth  and  origin  make  their  lives  and  characters 
more  decidedly  sub-human  than  those  of  common 
men.  The  very  effort  to  make  them  more  than  hu- 
man, or  more  than  natural,  renders  them  all  the  more 
inhuman,  unnatural,  fantastic,  and  absurd. 

The  commingling  of  the  two  streams  of  life,  mater- 
nal and  paternal,  and  the  divine  life  within  them  both, 
is  one  of  the  inscrutable  mysteries.  The  laws  which 
govern  it  are  as  yet  very  imperfectly  understood.  The 
paternal  life  is  wrapped  within  the  maternal,  the  lat- 
ter —  the  maternal  —  prevailing  through  the  years  of 
infancy  and  on  into  childhood,  and  serving  to  weave 
the  garments  of  flesh  and  blood  and  the  exterior 
qualities  of  mind  and  soul ;  all,  in  fine,  that  go  to 
make  up  the  external  man.  The  maternal  life  is 
sometimes  vigorous  and  dominating  to  such  an  ex- 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  BIRTH,  23 1 

tent  that  the  paternal  never  appears  externally,  or,  if 
at  all,  only  feebly  and  dimly.  It  is  held  within  the 
other,  and  held  in  abeyance.  Unless,  however,  it  is 
dominated  in  this  way,  it  appears,  though  later  than 
the  other  ;  the  paternal  qualities  coming  forth  witti 
greater  and  greater  fullness,  while  the  maternal  re- 
tire before  them,  and  sometimes  disappear  altogether, 
having  served  as  the  scaffolding  of  the  intellectual 
and  spiritual  man.  Hence  we  often  find  that  while 
the  resemblance  to  the  mother  at  first  is  very  great, 
in  mind,  feature,  and  disposition,  it  grows  less  and 
less  with  increasing  years,  while  the  features  and  the 
mind  and  passions  of  forefathers,  sometimes  for  gen- 
erations back,  break  through  and  become  envisaged 
in  all  their  strength  and  brightness.  Our  paternal 
humanity  is  within  our  maternal,  sometimes  never 
invading  the  consciousness  or  shaping  our  exteriors 
till  infancy  and  childhood  have  had  their  day,  but 
nevertheless  prevailing  in  the  end,  and  descending 
through  lines  of  ancestry  for  hundreds  of  years. 

Within  our  entire  humanity,  deeper  than  all  its 
wrappages  and  layers,  is  the  immanent  Deity  himself. 
But  He  never  invades  our  consciousness  as  God.  He 
never  is  within  us  as  any  part  of  our  proper  selves. 
Behind  and  within  our  voluntary  powers  He  is  the 
inspiring  energy  on  which  we  ever  draw,  and  out  of 
which  we  breathe  the  breath  of  life  ;  but  the  limit  of 
our  self-consciousness  is  precisely  the  limit  where 
humanity  ends.     When  his  life  becomes  our  life  it  is 


232  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

no  longer  Divine  but  human,  and  within  the  reach 
of  our  voluntary  agency,  to  give  back  to  Him  in  self- 
renouncing  service,  or  pervert  to  selfish  and  ignoble 
ends. 

Supposing  it  possible,  however,  for  a  being  to  be 
bom  into  our  earthly  degree  of  existence  with  a  finite 
maternal  humanity  on  one  side  and  the  Divine  Spirit 
on  the  other,  with  no  finite  fatherhood  between,  then 
it  is  conceivable  that  as  the  maternal  humanity  waned 
and  the  paternal  dawned  and  brightened  through  the 
consciousness,  it  would  image  forth  to  us  the  Divine 
perfections  on  a  loftier  plane  of  existence  than  man 
and  nature  had  ever  done.  Such  a  person  would  not 
speak  and  teach  and  act  merely  from  a  finite  and  fal- 
lible intelligence,  but  as  the  inmost  Divine  waxed  and 
the  outward  and  finite  waned,  he  would  speak  and  teach 
and  act  from  the  Divine  reason  itself.  Such  would 
not  be  a  case  of  mere  prophetic  inspiration  which  is 
temporary  and  vanishing,  but  of  Divine  incarnation, 
in  which  the  voice  of  the  Divine  Reason  is  the 
normal  dictate  of  the  soul.  It  would  not  be  right  to 
say  that  such  a  being  is  God,  if  you  mean  that  God  is 
limited  to  any  outward  symbolization,  but  it  would  be 
true  that  the  finite  maternal  humanity,  waning  and 
disappearing,  God  would  be  revealed  to  us  in  a  higher 
degree  of  life,  and  in  more  perfect  and  unclouded 
glory  than  inanimate  nature  or  sinful  men  could  ever 
reveal  Him.  And  though  what  is  called  "the  hypo- 
static union  "  is  beyond  our  comprehension  and  anal* 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  BIRTL'.  233 

ysis,  so  also  is  any  union  of  the  infinite  with  finite 
natures.  In  man  God  is  one  degree  nearer  to  us  than 
in  the  animal,  but  in  a  more  perfect  union  of  natures 
He  would  be  nearer  still,  and  with  a  personality  more 
openly  brought  to  view.  In  a  person  more  divinely 
human  there  would  be  nothing  unnatural,  but  some- 
thing more  than  natural ;  there  would  be  nature 
transfigured  and  exalted.  There  would  be  nothing 
inhuman,  but  something  more  than  human  ;  human- 
ity made  perfect,  and  therefore  the  most  clear  and 
spotless  mirror  through  which  the  divine  attributes 
shine  forth  upon  the  world.  We  can  conceive  that 
there  might  be  a  necessity  in  the  course  of  human 
advancement  for  such  a  revelation  of  the  Divine  Per- 
fections ;  that  sinful  men,  however  developed,  are  no 
adequate  representatives  of  God  ;  that  there  was  an 
appropriate  time  for  some  knowledge  of  Him  above 
the  light  of  nature,  above  depraved  human  instincts, 
above  legal  codes  and  verbal  declarations  ;  that  these 
instincts  themselves  might  have  been  yearning  for- 
ward in  expectation  of  a  nearer  divine  epiphany,  as 
when  men  watch  the  reddening  streaks  of  twilight ; 
until  God  should  appear  as  a  new  sunrise,  to  light  up 
the  dark  annals  of  the  earth  with  diviner  glow. 

We  are  assuming  nothing  here.  We  are  only  de- 
scribing the  rational  possibilities  and  probabilities  of 
the  case.  Men  might  find  God  partially  in  nature 
and  in  themselves,  for  He  is  immanent  in  both,  but 
in  such  a  divine  epiphany  He  would  be  revealed  in 


234  "^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

a  higher  degree  of  life  and  illustrate  both  nature 
and  man  more  perfectly  from  the  divine  side  of  all 
created  things.  By  the  immanence  of  God,  in  us, 
we  might  surely  recognize  such  an  advent  of  the 
Lord  when  it  takes  place.  But  we  should  not  be 
likely  to  master  its  psychology,  since  we  know  it 
so  little  in  the  lower  degrees  of  life,  where  infinite 
and  finite  interpenetrate  in  nature  and  in  ourselves. 
We  have  three  narratives  which  describe  the  birth 
of  Jesus  Christ,  those  of  Matthew,  Luke,  and  John. 
The  first,  describe  the  human,  the  last  the  divine  side 
of  this  one  event,  from  which  a  long  and  marvelous 
history  was  to  take  its  rise.  Matthew,  or  whoever 
wrote  his  preface,  says  He  was  born  of  Mary,  a  Jew- 
ish virgin,  and  was  begotten  of  the  Holy  Ghost  with- 
out any  intervening  human  paternity  ;  and  he  shows 
the  lineage  of  Joseph,  afterwards  her  husband,  in  its 
descent  through  David  from  Abraham,  the  father  of 
the  Jewish  nation.  Mary's  line,  though  not  traced, 
runs  into  that  of  Joseph,  as  she  belonged  probably  to 
the  same  tribe  ;  so  that  although  Jesus  had  no  human 
father,  yet  on  the  side  of  his  maternal  humanity  he 
would  inherit  the  proclivities  of  the  Jewish  race  from 
Abraham  downward.  Luke  also  gives  the  birth  of 
Christ  without  any  human  or  finite  fatherhood,  trac- 
ing the  line  inversely  from  Joseph  to  Abraham  and 
beyond  him  to  Adam,  the  son  of  God.  Both  these 
genealogies  were  probably  copied  from  public  records. 
The  names  in  the  two  genealogies  do  not  coincide^ 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  BIRTH,  235 

and  much  criticism  has  been  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  supposed  discrepancy.  But  there  is  no  discrep- 
ancy that  can  be  discovered.  These  names  do  not 
stand  for  individuals  merely,  but  many  of  them  for 
houses  or  families  through  a  long  lineage,  the  head 
of  the  line  being  preserved  where  it  runs  into 
another  line,  several  intervening  links  being  left 
out.  Jewish  genealogies  were  recorded  in  this 
way.  Thus  Matthew  says,  ^  Joram  begat  Ozias. 
But  Joram  was  not  the  father  of  Ozias,  but  his  an- 
cestor removed  four  degrees  from  him,  as  any  one 
will  see  by  tracing  the  genealogy  in  the  books  of 
Kings  and  Chronicles.  Three  links  are  there  re- 
corded which  Matthew  leaves  out.  All  that  can  be 
said  is,  the  missing  Hnks  of  Luke's  genealogy  do  not 
synchronize  with  the  missing  links  of  Matthew's. 
There  might  have  been  reasons  which  do  not  appear 
on  the  surface.  The  only  reason  for  giving  the  gen- 
ealogy at  all  was  to  represent  the  qualities  in  its 
several  degrees  upward  of  the  humanity  inherited 
and  impersonated  in  Jesus  Christ.  So,  too,  the  ob- 
jection that  Mary's  genealogy,  not  Joseph's,  ought 
rather  to  have  been  given,  has  no  validity.  Men,  not 
women,  represented  tribes  and  lines  of  descent,  and 
Joseph's  name  probably  stood  in  the  tribe  to  which 
Mary  belonged  and  through  which  came  all  the  an- 
cestral blood  that  coursed  through  her  veins. 

Matthew's  account,  as  we  have  said,  has  been  chal- 
1  Chap  i.  8. 


236  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

lenged  as  no  part  of  the  genuine  first  Gospel.  But 
the  genuineness  of  Luke's  narrative  is  unquestioned. 
The  most  fastidious  criticism  does  not  attempt  to 
mutilate  the  record.  Still  its  story  of  the  conception 
aild  birth  of  Christ  is  called  "  legendary  "  by  easy 
assumption  on  the  part  of  that  class  of  writers  who 
arbitrarily  sift  the  record  till  the  residuum  leaves  only 
a  man  of  natural  birth  and  endowment.  We  show 
elsewhere,  as  we  think,  excellent  reasons  for  regard- 
ing Luke's  account  as  coming  direct  from  the  lips  of 
Mary,  or  at  most  with  only  one  intervening  witness, 
that  of  John  her  adopted  son.  John's  testimony  is 
at  one  with  that  of  Matthew  and  Luke,  and  only 
rounds  and  complements  it.  His  record  assuredly 
of  the  birth  of  Jesus  interpenetrates  their's  from  the 
divine  side  of  things.  They  had  described  from  the 
earthly  side  and  from  Mary's  point  of  view,  the  ma- 
ternal humanity  with  all  its  inheritance  of  Jewish 
proclivities,  and  of  human  proclivities  from  Adam 
down.  John  supplements  them  by  saying  that  the 
Word,  which  was  eV  a.pK?^  with  God,  and  in  its  first 
principle  divine,  descending  into  this  world  to  sub- 
due and  save  it,  took  this  humanity  for  its  cloth- 
ing and  was  the  soul  of  its  soul  and  the  life  of  its 
life. 

Legendary !  A  legend  is  a  cumulative  accretion  ot 
hearsays  around  a  nucleus  of  common  fact,  clothing 
It  in  the  garb  of  fable  ;  and  the  common  fact  here 
was  the  birth  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  son  of  Joseph  and 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  BIRTH,  237 

Mary.  Legendary!  the  story  might  appear  so,  if 
you  isolate  it  and  make  it  stand  alone.  But  why  do 
you  isolate  it  ?  Read  on,  and  at  the  farther  end  of 
the  biography  we  come  to  the  death  of  this  person 
quite  as  exceptional  as  his  birth.  The  flesh  thus  as- 
sumed as  the  investiture  of  a  divine  life  did  not 
become  a  corpse,  like  the  bodies  of  other  men  to  see 
corruption  in  the  grave.  It  was  extruded  by  a  living 
process,  through  the  abounding  energy  within,  when 
the  divine  man  it  had  served  ascended  to  his  place 
on  high.  If  you  make  his  ingress  into  this  world  as 
here  given  legendary,  why  not  reduce  his  egress  from 
it  into  the  same  category }  If  you  shut  the  divine 
portal  through  which  He  came  in,  why  not  also  the 
divine  portal  through  which  He  went  out }  Then 
just  sit  down  and  scan  the  facts  that  lie  between  and 
see  what  can  be  made  of  them.  The  life  between 
constantly  forecasts  just  that  exit  from  this  world  ;  it 
courses  its  way  on  planes  of  being  far  above  those 
on  which  we  walk,  and  subsumes  just  such  a  birth 
and  death.  You  must  run  the  legendary  theory 
through  that  also,  till  all  the  history  is  disorganized 
and  tumbles  into  chaos.  And  even  then  you  have 
only  just  begun.  This  life  of  Christ  on  earth  was 
preliminary  and  preparatory  to  a  deeper  and  broader 
life  in  humanity,  coursing  through  the  history  of 
eighteen  hundred  years.  The  record  goes  on  to  say 
that  he  appeared  after  his  resurrection  as  the  guar- 
dian of  those  communions  called  churches,  and  that 


238  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  Holy  Ghost  through  him  "fell  on  them"  and  gave 
them  their  conquering  power.  The  Christian  Church 
ever  since,  conscious  of  his  presence  and  in  working 
divine  energy,  has  originated,  led  on,  and  inspired  all 
the  advanced  civilizations  of  the  world,  and  is  lead- 
ing them  still.  Legendary  !  Why  not  make  all  the 
after-history  legendary  too,  and  the  world's  progress 
starting  from  fiction  and  always  proceeding  under  it ! 
This  Ufe,  dating  from  that  birth  at  Bethlehem,  has 
continued  ever  since,  and  it  spans  our  lowly  history 
and  floods  it  with  more  than  rainbow  glories,  one 
foot  of  its  celestial  arc  resting  at  the  manger  where 
Mary  lay,  and  the  other  on  in  the  future,  for  aught 
we  can  tell  at  the  end  of  time.  Legendary !  Is  it 
necessary  to  abstract  such  a  birth  from  its  relations 
and  reduce  it  to  the  conditions  of  our  own  baby- 
hood ?  1 

1  See  the  Appendix  B,  on  the  Birth  of  Christ. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

NAZARETH. 

WE  have  only  one  chapter  in  the  childhood  of 
Jesus,  and  that  is  Nazareth.  This,  however, 
is  an  exceedingly  important  one,  and  better  probably 
than  any  accounts  which  his  mother  or  his  teachers 
would  have  given  us  of  his  education.  The  only 
written  statement  which  we  have  respecting  his  child- 
hood is  given  by  Luke,  and  seems  to  have  come 
from  Mary  his  mother,  perhaps  through  John  who 
became  her  foster-son.  It  is  exceedingly  general ; 
and  after  relating  the  journey  to  Jerusalem  and  his 
staying  behind  to  converse  with  the  doctors  of  the 
law,  we  are  told  that  He  returned  to  Nazareth,  was 
subject  to  Joseph  and  Mary,  and  that  while  he  grew 
in  wisdom  and  stature  he  grew  also  in  those  divine 
affections  which  won  the  favor  of  God  and  man. 
That  Mary  had  much  more  to  relate  respecting 
the  childhood  of  Jesus  is  an  unavoidable  inference 
from  our  knowledge  of  the  instincts  of  maternal 
love  ;  that  the  evangelists  have  treated  it  with  a 
most  severe  reticence  shows  how  providentially  they 
were  guided.  They  might  have  gratified  our  cu- 
riosity ;  but  it  is  not  likely  the  childhood  of  Jesus 


240  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

differed  greatly  from  that  of  other  children  ;  and 
probably  Luke  tells  us  about  all  that  is  to  be  said 
when  he  implies  this  increasing  grace  of  person  and 
behavior  with  the  increasing  wisdom  that  shone 
through  it. 

But  all  about  Nazareth  lay  the  open  book  which  He 
read,  and  it  lies  there  yet.  Paul  went  up  from  Tar- 
sus to  Jerusalem  and  studied  Jewish  lore  at  the  feet 
of  Gamaliel,  in  the  most  famous  theological  school  of 
his  times  ;  and  his  writings  bristle  all  through  with 
Jewish  terminologies.  Jesus  was  soon  to  have  the 
thick-coming  thoughts,  for  which  no  human  school 
could  furnish  adequate  language,  but  only  the  types 
and  images  in  the  infinite  treasuries  of  nature. 

Nazareth,  though  a  despised  country  town,  was  of 
all  places  the  most  propitious  for  an  education  of  this 
kind.  It  hes  in  a  small  basin  of  northern  Palestine 
imbosomed  in  hills.  The  basin  extends  about  a  mile 
from  west  to  east,  and  about  half  as  far  at  its  greatest 
width  from  north  to  south,  narrowing  toward  the  east 
into  a  deep  ravine,  giving  the  basin  the  shape  of  a 
pear  with  a  long  stem.  This  ravine  leads  out  into 
the  noble  plain  of  Esdraelon,  which  spreads  out  so 
far  below  that  a  transparent  mantle  of  sky-blue  is 
resting  upon  it.  The  hill  at  the  west  end  of  the 
basin  rises  abrupt  and  precipitous  ;  along  the  north- 
ern side  the  ridge  is  depressed  somewhat,  and  along 
the  south  and  east  it  sinks  still  lower.  The  town 
Itself  lies  at  the  western  extremity  of  this   basin, 


NAZARETH.  24 1 

cowering  under  the  bluffs  or  clinging  to  their  feet 
and  sides.  It  has  three  thousand  inhabitants,  about 
the  same  number  probably  as  in  the  days  of  Joseph 
and  Mary,  presenting  a  similar  external  appearance 
of  low  houses  with  flat  roofs,  looking  like  cubes  of 
stone.  As  you  enter  the  basin  through  the  narrow 
opening  on  the  east  and  come  into  the  town,  you  are 
greeted  at  this  day  with  a  more  friendly  welcome 
even  from  the  Jewish  population  than  is  usual  in  Pal- 
estine. A  fountain,  whose  waters  percolate  through 
the  veins  of  the  western  hills,  is  conducted  into  one 
of  the  streets  of  the  village,  and  falls  into  a  stone 
reservoir.  Over  the  fountain  itself  stands  now  a 
Christian  church  consecrated  to  the  Virgin,  because 
monkish  legends  will  have  it  that  her  house  was  near 
by.  With  more  probability  and  with  tolerable  cer- 
tainty, they  might  say  that  here  she  was  wont  to  come, 
with  the  other  women  of  the  city,  bearing  their 
pitchers  on  their  heads.  You  would  see  at  this  day 
a  crowd  of  women  around  the  reservoir  each  waiting 
for  her  turn,  and  you  would  notice  among  them  a 
peculiar  native  beauty  after  the  Syrian  type,  and  a 
peculiar  gracefulness  and  friendliness  of  manners, 
partly  owing  to  the  buoyant  health  they  breathe  in 
among  the  mountains. 

But  as  you  ascend  "  the  brow  of  the  hill  whereon 

their  city  is  built,"  and  which  in  one  place  breaks  off 

in  a  perpendicular  wall   forty  or  fifty  feet  in  height ; 

as   you  gain  the  summit  of  the   ridge   that   curves 

16 


242  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

round  it  on  the  west  like  a  protecting  arm,  a  most 
enchanting  panorama  is  unrolled  suddenly  to  your 
view,  every  fold  in  it  being  a  rich  historic  page.  On 
the  west  stretches  the  long  line  of  Carmel,  beginning 
far  away  south  towards  Samaria,  but  extending  north- 
westward to  where  he  seems  to  plunge  suddenly  into 
the  sea.  This  ridge  is  not  bald  like  some  of  the 
mountains  of  Judaea,  but  crowned  with  forest,  over 
whose  depressions  the  Mediterranean  gleams  here 
and  there  in  silver  curves.  All  the  history  of  Elijah, 
the  Tishbite,  is  given  back  to  your  memory  as  you 
gaze,  up  to  the  time  when  he  disappeared  in  his 
chariot  of  fire.  Look  northward  and  the  scene  va- 
ries. Near  by  stretches  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
plains  of  northern  Palestine,  watered  by  a  stream 
which  divides  it  like  a  glittering  thread  on  its  way 
to  the  Kishon,  where  Elijah  slew  the  false  prophets. 
Beyond  this  plain  northward  the  ridges  rise  one  be- 
yond another  like  ascending  stairs,  each  taking  on 
a  deeper  tinge  of  blue.  The  mountains  of  Safed, 
twenty  miles  away,  overtop  all  between,  and  there, 
lifted  up  into  the  sky,  you  see  the  place  itself,  "  a  city 
set  upon  a  hill."  But  Safed  is  backed  by  still  higher 
ridges,  and  they  roll  in  ascending  billows  sixty  miles 
away  up  to  Mount  Hermon  himself,  who  looks  down 
on  the  whole  in  cold  and  scornful  majesty  from  under 
his  crown  of  snow. 

If  you  turn  towards  the  east  and  southeast,  another 
plain,  the  magnificent  plain  of  Esdraelon,  spreads  out 


NAZARETH.  243 

its  long  level  floors  of  green,  under  their  mantle  of 
sky-color,  sprinkled  more  sparsely  with  signs  of  pop- 
ulation, with  valleys  winding  like  dissolving  views 
among  the  hills.  Out  of  this  plain  rises  Tabor, 
rounded  like  a  hemisphere,  little  Hermon,  and  Gil- 
boa,  where  "  the  shield  of  Saul  was  vilely  cast  away  ;  " 
and  through  a  depression  north  of  Tabor  you  look 
into  the  valley  of  the  Jordan,  and  over  the  high 
plains  away  beyond  to  the  hills  of  Peraea  which 
shade  off  into  the  Orient.  South  towards  Jerusalem 
rises  a  spur  of  the  ridge  of  Carmel,  and  over  it  loom 
up  Ebal  and  Gerizim,  from  which  the  curses  and  the 
blessings  answered  to  each  other.  Nearer  by,  and 
forming  the  heart  of  Palestine,  spreads  out  the  vast 
plain  of  Esdraelon  with  its  gentle  undulations  ; 
fields  covered  over  with  corn,  interminable  flocks  and 
herds  ranging  in  luxuriant  pastures  ;  —  the  granary 
of  the  surrounding  country,  rich  in  natural  produc- 
tions and  voluptuous  beauty  ;  rich,  too,  in  historic 
memories,  as  the  scene  over  which  the  most  decisive 
battles  had  rolled  back  and  forth.  Such  is  the  hori- 
zon of  Nazareth,  more  crowded  with  life  and  in- 
dustry when  Joseph  and  Mary  lived  there,  but  whose 
paradisical  enchantments  have  not  yet  faded  out.  To 
know  all  its  loveliness  and  magnificence  you  should 
see  it  in  the  morning  as  the  sky  reddens  beyond  the 
hills  of  Peraea,  till  the  sun  crimsons  the  snows  of 
Hermon  and  then  lights  up  peak  after  peak  below 
him  as  with  a  torch  ;   or  you  should  see  it  at  even^ 


244  "^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

tide,  as  the  sun  drops  behind  Carmel  and  dissolves  in 
the  sea,  turning  Kishon  and  its  affluents  into  burn- 
ing threads,  turning  the  vapors  of  the  Mediterranean 
into  new  "  chariots  of  fire  and  horses  of  fire  "  for  other 
ascending  EHjahs,  and  thence  diffusing  over  the  broad 
panorama  of  the  GaUlean  hills  and  valleys  a  purpling 
softness  like  the  more  tender  and  brooding  mercy  of 
the  Lord. 

And  why  do  we  open  these  beautiful  pages  ?  Be- 
cause it  is  certain  they  were  the  study  of  Jesus  for 
thirty  years  ;  because  the  infinite  Word  that  was  al- 
ready dawning  through  his  higher  consciousness  was 
here  to  find  its  language.  This  vast  treasury  of  type 
and  imagery  was  to  be  drawn  up  into  discourse  and 
parable,  as  the  embodiment  of  truths  for  which  no 
language  of  books  could  furnish  an  appropriate  set- 
ting. Not  only  nature  in  all  her  lights  and  shadows, 
but  human  life  in  all  its  busy  ongoings,  was  out- 
spread within  the  horizon  of  Nazareth.  The  keepers 
of  vineyards  pruning  their  vines ;  the  shepherds 
leading  their  flocks  a-field  ;  the  husbandmen  sowing 
their  grain  ;  the  plains  over  which  the  breezes  as 
they  swept  made  waves  in  the  fields  of  wheat  and 
tare  ;  the  reapers  at  their  work  over  the  vast  surfaces 
of  P^sdraelon  and  El  Battauf;  the  prognostics  of 
storm  coming  up  from  the  sea,  or  of  fair  weather 
when  the  sky  at  evening  reddens  over  the  ridges  of 
Carmel  ;  the  Light  of  the  World  coming  out  of  the 
east  to  enlighten  every  man  ;  —  all  these  and  much 


NAZARETH.  245 

more  were  daily  in  sight  over  that  "  brow  of  the 
hill "  whereon  the  city  of  Nazareth  was  built.  Two 
processes  were  going  on  in  preparing  the  Christ  for 
his  work,  —  one  of  Spirit  and  one  of  sense.  Higher 
truth  than  men  had  received  or  known  was  coming 
down  through  the  heaven  of  his  mind ;  better  and 
more  universal  types  were  drawn  up  from  earth 
through  the  senses  to  meet  it  and  body  it  forth. 
The  Son  of  God  was  also  the  son  of  Mary  ;  the  Word 
was  made  flesh  to  find  a  dwelling-place  in  the  midst 
of  men.i 

1  Renan's  description  of  the  scenery  of  Palestine  is  picturesque, 
though  distinctness  of  feature  is  often  sacrificed  for  brilliancy.  Rob- 
inson is  both  picturesque  and  exact  as  line  and  compass.  After  an 
excellent  description  of  the  horizon  of  Nazareth  he  thus  indicates  the 
associations  of  the  place,  looking  from  the  plateau  above  the  town  : 
"  Seating  myself  in  the  shade  of  the  Wely,  I  remained  for  some  hours 
upon  this  spot,  lost  in  the  contemplation  of  the  wide  prospect,  and 
of  the  events  connected  with  the  scenes  around.  In  the  village  be- 
low the  Saviour  of  the  world  had  passed  his  childhood  ;  and  although 
we  have  few  particulars  of  his  life  during  those  early  years,  yet  there 
are  certain  features  of  nature  that  meet  our  eyes  now,  just  as  they 
once  met  his.  He  must  often  have  visited  the  fountain  near  which  we 
had  pitched  our  tent ;  his  feet  must  frequently  have  wandered  over 
the  adjacent  hills,  and  his  eyes  doubtless  gazed  upon  the  splendid 
prospect  from  this  very  spot.  Here  the  Prince  of  Peace  looked  down 
upon  the  great  plain,  where  the  din  of  battles  so  often  had  rolled,  and 
the  garments  of  the  warrior  been  dyed  in  blood  ;  and  He  looked  out, 
too,  upon  that  sea  over  which  the  swift  ships  were  to  bear  the  tidings 
of  his  salvation  to  nations  and  to  continents  then  unknown.  How 
has  the  moral  aspect  of  things  been  changed  !  Battles  and  blood- 
shed have  indeed  not  ceased  to  desolate  this  unhappy  country,  md 


246  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

gross  darkness  now  covers  the  people ;  but  from  this  region  a  light 
went  forth  which  has  enlightened  the  world  and  unveiled  new  climes ; 
and  now  the  rays  of  that  light  begin  to  be  reflected  back  from  dis- 
tant isles  and  continents,  to  illuminate  anew  the  darkened  land, 
where  it  first  sprung  up."  —  Researches^  vol.  iii.  pp.  190,  191. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   FORERUNNER. 

THERE  was  nothing  in  the  established  ceremo- 
nies of  the  Jewish  national  religion  which  was 
worthy  of  the  name  of  preaching.  That  religion  was 
administered  mainly  in  the  temple,  the  synagogues, 
and  the  theological  schools.  The  synagogues  were  the 
parochial  churches.  They  existed  in  every  town  in 
Judaea.  The  most  elevated  sites  which  could  be  ob- 
tained were  chosen  for  them,  and  it  violated  all  sense 
of  Jewish  propriety  and  sacredness  to  see  any  other 
building  overlook  the  synagogue.  Ten  men  were 
considered  a  sufficient  but  indispensable  number  to 
organize  a  synagogue,  which  word,  like  our  word 
"  church  "  came  at  length  to  signify  either  the  eccle- 
siastical organism,  or  the  building  in  which  they  as- 
sembled for  worship. 

In  any  principal  town  or  large  city  these  buildings 
were  multiplied  indefinitely,  all  of  them  constructed 
after  the  same  pattern.  We  may  form  some  idea 
of  their  number  when  we  consider  that  there  were 
twelve  in  Tiberias  ;  and  since  the  erecting  of  syna- 
gogues was  a  mark  of  piety  and  passport  to  heaven, 
we  need  not  be  surprised  that  there  were  no  fewei 


248  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

than  four  hundred  and  sixty  in  Jerusalem  alone. 
They  were  long  rectangular  structures,  and  always 
consisted  of  two  parts.  The  icel,  or  sanctuary,  by 
way  of  eminence,  was  in  the  most  westerly  part,  cor- 
responding to  the  most  holy  place  in  the  temple,  and 
in  it  was  placed  the  ark  or  chest  which  contained  the 
Book  of  the  Law  and  the  Sections  of  the  Prophets. 
The  other  part  was  the  body  of  the  church,  where  the 
congregation  assembled.  At  one  extremity  of  this 
department  was  an  elevated  platform,  on  which  sat 
the  officers  of  the  synagogue,  facing  the  congregation, 
and  on  which  was  a  desk  or  pulpit  for  the  readers 
and  the  minister.  The  congregation  sat  facing  the 
officers.  They  did  not  sit  promiscuously,  but  the 
men  were  separated  from  the  women  by  a  screen 
which  divided  the  body  of  the  church  lengthwise  as 
far  as  the  elevated  platform. 

The  chief  officers  of  the  synagogue  were  three 
rulers,  the  readers,  and  the  minister.  The  rulers 
had  a  general  care  and  direction,  told  the  readers 
when  to  begin  and  the  people  when  to  say  amen. 
The  readers  were  seven  in  number,  and  took  turns 
in  reading  the  lesson  of  the  day.  Any  one  in  the 
congregation,  however,  could  be  called  to  this  ser- 
vice. How  important  and  laborious  it  was  may  be 
judged  from  the  fact  that  the  Law  and  the  Prophets, 
comprising  the  bulk  of  our  Old  Testament  Canon, 
were  required  to  be  read  through  once  a  year  in  the 
public  ritual,  and  for  this  purpose  were  divided  into 


THE  FORERUNNER.  249 

fifty-two  portions,  one  of  which  must  be  despatched 
every  Sabbath-day.  It  must  be  read  in  the  original 
Hebrew,  and  therefore  there  must  be  a  translator  to 
render  it  verse  by  verse  into  the  language  of  the  peo- 
ple, which  in  our  Saviour's  day  was  the  Syro-Chal- 
dee.  Besides  this,  several  prayers  must  be  recited. 
If  we  may  credit  Buxtorff,  there  were  not  less  than 
eighteen  belonging  to  the  regular  service,  which  fact 
gives  us  a  vivid  apprehension  of  our  Saviour's  words 
denouncing  the  greater  damnation  against  men  who 
for  show  make  long  prayers.  After  the  prayers  came 
the  repetition  of  their  phylacteries,  which  was  done 
mentally  and  individually,  out  of  regard  for  the  law 
of  God  and  as  a  guard  against  evil  thoughts  and  evil 
spirits.  These  were  texts  of  Scripture  attached  to 
their  garm^ents  and  worn  generally  near  the  heart. 
The  synagogues  were  opened  not  on  the  Sabbath 
alone  but  on  two  other  days  during  the  week,  which 
were  regarded  as  a  kind  of  fast-days,  but  the  same 
lesson  which  was  droned  on  these  week-days  was 
repeated  on  the  Sabbath  following  for  the  benefit  of 
the  laboring  class  who  could  only  attend  during  holy 
time.  The  superlative  merits  of  the  Pharisee  who 
fasted  twice  a  week,  can  hence  be  estimated.  He 
despatched  one  fifty-second  part  of  the  Law  and 
the  Prophets  three  times  during  every  seven  days, 
to  say  nothing  of  his  phylacteries  and  the  eighteen 
prayers  which  swelled  still  further  the  amount  of  his 
meritorious  works.     The  readers,  who  were  selected 


250  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

for  their  devotion  or  intelligence,  were  at  liberty 
to  throw  in  running  commentaries  of  their  own, 
though  the  stated  duty  of  expounding  the  Scrip- 
ture devolved  upon  the  minister,  otherwise  called 
the  Angel  of  the  Synagogue.  This  was  done  after 
the  readers  had  got  through,  and  with  how  much 
unction  and  enlargement  may  be  judged  from  the 
fact  that  he  generally  spoke  sitting  in  his  seat. 

What  torpor  and  spiritual  death  must  at  length 
overtake  a  people  buried  under  such  a  load  of  ritual- 
ism as  this  !  We  may  well  imagine  how  the  startling 
news  broke  in  upon  the  everlasting  droning  of  the 
synagogue,  when  a  man  suddenly  appeared  of  such 
fiery  eloquence  that  he  shook  the  whole  valley  of  the 
Jordan  from  one  mountain  range  to  the  other.  Such 
was  John  the  Baptist.  The  memorials  of  him,  though 
few,  bring  him  before  us  with  great  distinctness. 
The  account  given  of  him  by  Josephus,  harmonizes 
remarkably  with  all  that  is  said  of  him  in  the  New 
Testament.  His  mother  and  the  mother  of  Jesus 
were  cousins-german,  and  John  must  have  known 
something  of  his  great  kinsman  by  personal  acquaint- 
ance ;  but  they  did  not  reside  near  each  other,  and 
there  is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  his  inspiration 
came  from  that  intercourse.  His  education  was 
mainly  in  the  desert.  That  is  to  say,  like  the 
Essenes,  he  withdrew  in  disgust  from  the  hollow 
ritualism  of  the  synagogues  and  the  pedantry  which 
loaded  down  the  theological  schools,  and  away  in  the 


THE  FORERUNNER.  25 1 

silent  places  of  contemplation,  the  power  of  God 
came  upon  him  in  over-measure,  and  clothed  him  as 
with  a  robe  of  flame.  He  must  have  known  the  Es- 
senes,  as  we  said,  for  they  were  close  by  him  on  both 
sides  of  the  Dead  Sea,  with  the  same  doctrines  of 
righteousness,  the  same  disgust  of  Jewish  hypocrisy, 
and  the  same  baptism  by  immersion  symbolizing  re- 
pentance and  newness  of  Hfe.  But  John,  in  spirit 
and  method,  differed  vastly  from  the  Essenes,  and 
did  not  belong  to  them.  They  were  quietists  aiming 
only  to  keep  their  own  garments  white,  and  to  get  to 
heaven  by  a  secret  way.  John  was  aggressive,  as  the 
fire  on  a  prairie  swept  by  a  mighty  wind.  Up  and 
down  the  valley  of  the  Jordan,  where  the  desert 
skirted  the  line  of  cities  and  towns,  he  went  in  the 
power  of  the  Lord,  and  poured  his  denunciations 
against  hypocrisy  and  injustice.  He  was  clothed  in 
the  coarse  garb  of  the  old  prophets,  with  a  leathern 
girdle  about  his  loins.  He  lived  in  the  very  haunts 
where  Elijah  had  lived,  and  ate  the  food  of  the  desert. 
No  greater  man,  said  our  Saviour,  had  been  born  of 
woman,  and  though  the  last  of  a  long  illustrious  line 
of  prophets,  their  moral  power  and  grandeur  culmi- 
nated in  him.  The  Jews  of  his  day  had  seen  and 
heard  nothing  like  him.  Of  course  it  was  not  long 
before  the  sleepy  synagogues  waked  up  and  emptied 
themselves  into  the  desert.  They  came  at  first,  doubt- 
less out  of  curiosity,  to  see  a  seven-days'  wonder,  but 
the  truth  shivered  through  them  like  the  lightning, 


252  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

and  converts  were  multiplied.  People  came  not  only 
from  Judaea,  but  from  remote  Galilee.  "  What  shall 
we  do  ? "  said  they,  searched  by  the  preacher's  words. 
**  Let  him  who  has  two  tunics  give  one  to  him  who 
has  none,  and  let  him  who  has  food,  do  likewise,"  was 
the  answer,  rebuking  the  prevailing  covetousness  and 
rapacity.  It  was  a  time  of  war  between  Herod  and 
Aretas,  King  of  Arabia,  and  soldiers  were  quartered 
in  the  land.  These,  too,  came  under  the  strokes  of 
the  preacher,  and  asked,  "  What  shall  we  do  } "  "  Be 
satisfied  with  your  wages,  and  stop  plundering  the 
people."  Tax-gatherers  came,  a  hated  and  pestilent 
class  of  men,  to  whom  some  patrician  in  his  palace  at 
Rome  committed  the  farming  of  the  revenue,  with 
unlimited  license  to  peel  the  people  of  his  province. 
"  And  what  are  we  to  do } "  "  Exact  nothing  but 
what  is  your  due."  Jerusalem  itself  was  shaken. 
The  travelled  road  through  Jericho  from  the  capital 
was  choked  with  a  living  stream  emptying  itself  into 
the  desert.  John  himself  seems  to  have  been  sur- 
prised to  see  them.  "  Have  you  come,  too,  you  brood 
of  vipers,  out  of  your  serpent's  nest }  Bring  forth 
fruits  worthy  of  repentance.  Boast  not  of  your  de- 
scent from  Abraham,  for  I  declare  to  you  that  God 
out  of  these  stones  could  make  better  children  of 
Abraham  than  ye  are."  His  fiery  rebukes,  however, 
not  only  smote  the  heart,  but  melted  it.  He  made 
disciples,  and  founded  a  school,  which  survived  long 
after  his  death.     He  impressed  his  great  and  earnest 


THE  FORERUNNER.  253 

mind  upon  the  mind  of  his  nation,  and  the  whole 
people  cherished  his  fame  as  theirs.  He  was  more 
than  prophet ;  as  we  shall  see  presently,  he  had  the 
gift  of  seership  beside.  He  was  one  of  those  great 
minds  like  the  Grecian  Demosthenes,  in  which  the 
national  life  gathered  intensity  for  a  last  effort,  and 
flamed  up  with  expiring  brilliancy.  Coming  at  the 
approach  of  a  great  crisis,  and  elevated  far  above  the 
plodding  interests  of  the  hour,  his  ear  heard  distinctly 
the  steps  of  the  coming  doom.  Within  the  wider 
horizon  which  he  swept  with  his  eye,  a  great  woe  was 
in  sight,  and  hourly  drawing  nearer.  Hence  his  "  cry 
in  the  wilderness  "  to  repentance,  as  an  escape  from 
the  wrath  to  come.  But  he  belonged  to  the  old  dis- 
pensation and  not  the  new.  He  was  Hebrew  through 
every  fibre  of  his  being.  His  call  was  to  repentance, 
to  the  unchangeable  morahty,  to  the  eternal  justice 
which  had  been  set  aside  for  a  pompous  ecclesiasti- 
cism  that  filled  itself  with  inhumanity  and  self-con- 
ceit, as  a  sponge  imbibes  water.  But  repentance  and 
reformation  were  all  he  could  preach.  That  opening 
of  the  heavens  through  which  the  Spirit  was  to  come 
for  a  new  creation  and  a  new  consciousness  of  God 
in  human  nature,  was  not  given  to  him,  and  he  knew 
it.  But  he  knew  that  this,  too,  must  come,  and  he 
watched  for  its  prognostics  in  the  faith  that  he  was 
sent  to  prepaie  the  way. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   HOMES   OF  JESUS. 

np^HE  idea  we  get  of  Jesus  from  a  cursory  and 
•*"  superficial  reading  of  the  Evangelists,  of  a 
homeless  wanderer,  with  no  place  of  permanent 
abode,  roaming  about  Palestine  with  twelve  men,  liv- 
ing by  miracle,  or  claiming  the  hospitality  of  stran- 
gers, soon  melts  away  on  a  more  careful  study  of  the 
records.  He  had  his  abiding-places,  whence  he  went 
forth  on  his  mission,  and  into  whose  shadows  he  ever 
returned  either  from  the  glare  of  notoriety,  from  the 
heat  and  burden  of  the  day,  or  from  the  threats  and 
persecutions  of  those  who  sought  his  life.  Indeed, 
much  of  his  time  was  passed  in  this  retirement  in 
preparation  for  his  public  work,  which  seems  to  be 
the  reason  of  a  common  mistake,  —  that  this  work 
was  all  crowded  into  the  last  two  or  three  years  of 
his  life. 

The  homes  of  Jesus  were  three.  These  are  very 
distinctly  traced.  It  is  necessary  always  to  keep 
them  in  mind  if  we  would  contemplate  his  life  in  its 
unity,  and  understand  the  coherence  with  which  the 
Evangelists  have  described  it.  It  is  from  want  of 
attention  to  this  subject  that  some  writers  talk  of 


THE  HOMES  OF  JESUS.  2$$ 

discrepancies,  especially  between  John  and  the  syn- 
optics, where  they  only  interlock  each  other  in  a  con- 
sistent whole. 

The  home  of  his  childhood  and  earUest  manhood 
we  have  already  described.  That  Joseph  and  Mary 
belonged  neither  to  the  highest  nor  the  lowest  rank, 
but  to  the  robust  and  healthful  middle  class  of  Jewish 
society,  is  abundantly  evident.  There  was  a  school 
attached  to  the  synagogue,  in  which  Jewish  children 
were  taught  to  read  and  write,  and  also  instructed  in 
the  canonical  writings  of  the  Old  Testament.  Jesus 
must  have  been  educated  in  this  school.  That  he  at- 
tended any  higher  one,  is  very  improbable  ;  indeed, 
it  is  implied  in  the  narratives,  that  he  did  not.  "  Hav- 
ing never  learned,"  means  that  he  never  had  been 
a  scholar  in  those  higher  schools  of  the  Rabbins, 
where  he  would  only  have  imbibed  the  intolerable 
pedantry  embodied  in  the  "  Talmud  "  at  a  later  day. 
The  law  and  the  prophets  which  he  learned  to  read 
at  the  synagogue,  and  the  great  book  of  nature  spread 
out  gloriously  from  the  plateau  just  above,  must  have 
been  the  sources  of  the  lore  which  he  acquired  at 
his  home  in  Nazareth. 

There  was  another  home  which  he  occupied  after- 
ward, and  during  a  part  of  his  public  ministry.  It 
was  at  Capernaum,  on  the  northwestern  shore  of  the 
lake  of  Galilee,  some  seventeen  miles  from  Nazareth. 
The  narrative  warrants  the  inference  that  acquaint- 
ances and   kinsfolk  of  his  mother's  family  resided 


256  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

there,  as  they  went  thither  on  a  temporary  visit  be- 
fore a  final  removal  of  residence.^  It  is  certain  that 
a  married  sister  of  his  mother  resided  in  Galilee,  the 
wife  of  Alphaeus,  otherwise  called  Cleopas,  two  of 
whose  sons,  Jude  and  James  the  less,  afterwards  were 
numbered  among  the  chosen  twelve.  She  might 
have  resided  at  Capernaum  or  its  neighborhood,  as 
she  is  found  afterward  associated  with  women  who 
belonged  there. 

The  Sea  of  Galilee  has  been  called  the  Geneva  of 
Palestine,  on  account  of  the  picturesque  beauty  and 
sublimity  of  its  scenery.  It  is  about  sixteen  miles  in 
length,  and  half  as  many  in  breadth,  deep  set  within 
a  cordon  of  lofty  hills.  Through  these  hills  there  are 
two  openings,  one  on  the  north  for  the  ingress  of  the 
waters  of  the  Jordan,  another  on  the  south  for  their 
egress.  They  make  a  current  through  the  middle  of 
the  lake,  but  elsewhere  lie  in  their  deep  basin,  still  as 
glass,  and  giving  back  as  truly  the  skies  above  them 
and  the  scenery  around,  except  when  some  sudden 
gust  finds  its  way  over  the  hills,  which  is  very  sel- 
dom. The  hills  are  now  brown  and  stripped  of  for- 
est ;  but  if  we  may  trust  Josephus,  this  region,  in  the 
times  of  our  Saviour,  was  so  luxuriant,  that  nature 
seemed  to  work  here  a  perpetual  miracle.  Fruits 
which  required  a  hot  climate,  and  others  which  re- 
quired a  cold  one,  grew  and  flourished  side  by  side. 
"  One  may  call  it,"  he  says,  "  the  ambition  of  Nature, 

1  John  ii.  12. 


THE  HOMES  OF  JESUS.  2 $7 

where  it  forces  those  plants  that  are  naturally  ene- 
mies to  each  other,  to  agree  together."  ^  On  the  west- 
ern side  of  the  lake  the  hills  trend  away  from  the 
shores,  and  along  its  margin  stood  five  cities,  or 
towns,  whose  names  have  become  immortal.  Near 
the  head  of  the  lake  stood  Bethsaida  and  Capernaum, 
which  had  become  noted  stations  for  fisheries ;  far- 
ther south,  probably,  were  Chorazin  and  Magdala, 
and  farther  still,  Tiberias,  built  by  Herod  the  Te- 
trarch,  the  murderer  of  John  the  Baptist,  and  often 
occupied  by  him  as  one  of  his  capitals. 

Along  the  shores  of  this  peaceful  lake,  Jesus  went 
forth  from  his  home  in  Capernaum,  on  his  heavenly 
errands.  Here  he  found  most  of  his  twelve  disci- 
ples. Here  he  wrought  those  wonderful  cures  which 
blazoned  his  name  through  the  country,  so  that  the 
crowds  flocked  about  him  whenever  he  appeared 
abroad.  Galilee  contained  a  mixed  population,  not 
Jews  only,  but  people  of  heathen  religions  and  of  no 
religion,  Greeks,  Syrians,  and  Phoenicians,  and  though 
more  ignorant  and  boorish  than  the  pure  orthodox  of 
Judaea,  they  had  much  less  of  the  flint  of  Jewish  big- 
otry and  pride.  Almost  the  whole  narrative  of  the 
synoptics  is  taken  up  with  the  work  of  Christ  in  Gal- 
ilee, as  it  radiated  from  his  home  in  Capernaum. 
There  were  personal  reasons  for  this,  as  we  shall 
see.  Matthew  and  Peter,  who  were  eye  and  ear  wit- 
nesses of  what  they  relate,  resided  at   Capernaum, 

1  Wars,  iii,  x.  8. 
17 


258  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

and  their  own  work  as  missionaries  was  mainly  in 
Galilee. 

But  there  was  another  locality  which  was  also 
one  of  the  homes  of  Jesus.  It  was  such  before  he 
went  to  Capernaum.  To  understand  this  portion  of 
our  Saviour's  life,  we  must  divest  ourselves  at  once 
of  a  good  share  of  our  occidental  notions  about  re- 
ligious culture.  We  are  the  least  given  to  contem- 
plation, solitude,  and  introversion,  of  any  people  on 
the  face  of  the  earth.  We  rush  into  crowds,  hold 
meetings,  din  each  other  with  sermons  and  exhorta- 
tions, which  sermons  and  exhortations  are  generally 
the  common  places  of  the  sect  we  belong  to ;  and  the 
shallow  draughts  from  each  other's  well-nigh  empty 
pitchers,  we  call  getting  religion.  It  was  not  so  in 
the  East.  They  drew  from  deeper  wells.  All  but 
the  book-men  and  the  pedants  who  only  reproduced 
each  other  in  geometrical  progression  till  the  tra- 
ditions were  too  heavy  to  bear,  drew  their  deepest 
draughts  from  the  springs  of  divine  grace  in  the 
meditative  soul. 

Long  before  Jesus  appeared,  what  was  best  in  re- 
ligion, what  was  highest  and  purest  in  morality,  was 
withdrawn  from  public  view.  The  Essenes,  if  we 
may  credit  Josephus  and  Philo,  —  the  former  of  whom 
dwelt  among  them  three  years  to  learn  of  their  doc- 
trine and  manners,  —  preserved  about  the  only  cultus 
which  existed  in  the  East,  purified  from  idolatry,  su- 
perstition, and  hypocrisy.     Near  the  western  shores 


THE  HOMES  OF  JESUS,  259 

of  the  Dead  Sea,  a  community  of  these  people  ex- 
isted in  seclusion,  disgusted  with  the  knavery  and 
petrified  selfishness  which  lurked  under  all  the  forms 
of  the  popular  religion,  and  there  they  maintained  a 
lofty  devotion,  a  pure  doctrine  of  God,  immortality, 
and  retribution,  with  an  unselfish  morality  and  un- 
corrupted  manners.  They  had  all  things  in  common. 
They  had  ramified  into  other  communions  of  like 
faith  which  existed  in  the  deserts  and  sometimes  in 
the  cities  and  towns,  receiving  the  books  of  Moses, 
which  they  interpreted  allegorically,  never  going  up 
to  the  Jewish  festivals,  nor  appearing  in  the  tem- 
ple, but  "gazing  on  the  bright  countenance  of  Truth," 
in  their  own  quiet  contemplations.  They  dwelt  on 
the  love  of  God,  denounced  every  kind  of  dishonesty, 
and  insisted  on  justice,  piety,  and  neighborly  love. 
Baptism  by  immersion  was  a  common  practice  among 
them,  not  only  for  keeping  the  body  chaste  and 
wholesome,  but  as  the  symbol  of  a  clean  heart. 
Their  constancy  was  brought  to  the  severest  trial ; 
for  Herod  put  them  to  cruel  tortures,  which  they 
would  not  only  meet  with  serenity,  but  with  a  smile 
of  triumph  over  pain  and  death,  radiant  with  the 
hope  of  immortality. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  either  Jesus  or  John  the 
Baptist  ever  visited  these  people,  but  there  is  abun- 
dant evidence  that  both  of  them  combined  the  rites, 
the  morality,  and  some  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Essenes 
with  their  own.     John  must  have  known  of  them,  for 


26o  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

he  preached  and  baptized  in  their  immediate  neigh- 
borhood, where  he  thundered  forth  their  maxims  of 
truth  and  justice. 

Admitting  that  Luke's  Gospel  and  Matthew's  pref- 
ace give  us  the  true  account  respecting  the  concep- 
tion and  birth  of  Jesus,  it  must  be  obvious  that  there 
were  twofold  reasons  for  his  withdrawment  betimes 
from  the  disturbances  of  outward  things.  The  Word 
that  was  to  be  given  him  was  to  come  neither  from 
human  teachers  nor  from  the  external  world.  It  was 
to  come  down  through  the  opening  heaven  of  his  own 
mind  as  soon  as  the  sensuous  nature  which  he  re- 
ceived through  the  maternal  humanity  had  drawn  up 
from  earthly  things  the  types  and  images  which  were 
to  serve  as  the  prints  and  copies  of  the  heavenly. 
Necessity  was,  therefore,  laid  upon  him  by  the  con- 
stitution of  his  being,  to  pass  away  from  the  outward 
till  the  heavenly  realities  filled  and  possessed  his 
consciousness.  The  whole  nights  spent  in  prayer, 
away  from  his  disciples  and  on  the  lonely  mountain 
heights,  must  not  be  understood  as  time  occupied  in 
verbal  petitions  to  God.  We  shall  see  presently  that 
nothing  of  the  kind  is  signified. 

The  great  Ghor,  or  valley  of  the  Jordan,  extends 
from  the  lake  of  Galilee  to  the  Dead  Sea,  through 
some  seventy  miles.  Throughout  it  presents  the 
same  phenomena.  Two  ranges  of  hills  and  bluffs 
bound  it  on  either  side,  —  that  on  the  west  skirting 
Galilee,  Samaria,  and  a  part  of  Judaea ;  that  on  the 


THE  HOMES  OF  JESUS.  26 1 

east  skirting  the  land  of  Peraea,  the  country  beyond 
the  Jordan.  From  the  summit  of  one  of  these  ranges 
you  look  across  to  the  other.  Sometimes  they  ap- 
proach each  other  to  within  five  miles,  sometimes 
they  trend  away  to  eight  or  ten.  They  are  rocky  and 
precipitous,  and  rise  over  two  thousand  feet  above 
the  bed  of  the  river.  This  great  valley  is  cut  by  the 
Jordan  unequally.  As  it  issues  from  the  lake  of 
Galilee  it  leaves  most  of  the  valley  on  the  east,  but 
before  entering  the  Dead  Sea  it  leaves  two  thirds  of 
it  on  the  side  of  Palestine,  creeping  nearer  the  Peraean 
hills. 

The  great  valley  itself  is  composed  of  two  plains, 
an  upper  and  a  lower  one.  The  lower  one  is  a  mile  in 
width,  making  the  bed  of  the  river  itself,  filled  to  the 
outer  edge  when  the  river  is  swollen,  but  offering 
quite  a  margin  when,  in  times  of  drought,  the  river 
shrinks  within  its  channel.  This  margin  of  the  lower 
plane,  therefore,  being  alternately  wet  and  dry,  is 
covered  with  reeds  and  bushes,  and  sometimes  with 
tall  trees,  which  harbor  wild  beasts  of  prey.  Here 
lurked  the  lion  who  "came  up  at  the  swelling  of 
Jordan"  from  his  lair.  The  upper  plain,  extending 
from  this  reedy  margin  to  the  bluffs,  is  a  barren  waste 
of  marl  and  ashy  soil,  presenting  a  scene  of  awful 
desolation.  It  is  from  two  to  four  miles  in  breadth 
on  either  side.  Sometimes,  where  the  upper  plane 
»,erminates  with  the  bluffs,  springs  of  water  percolate 
through  the  rocks,  making  little  oases,  as  is  the  case 


262  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Opposite  Jericho.  Sometimes  the  bluffs  are  rent  by 
steep  gorges  which  are  the  beds  of  rapid  rivers  in 
wet  seasons,  and  in  dry  become  cavernous  and  shaggy 
ravines. 

What  we  have  now  described  was  known  as  the 
Desert  or  the  Wilderness.  The  valley  "  on  this  side 
Jordan"  from  Samaria  to  the  Dead  Sea  was  "the 
Wilderness  of  Judaea,"  some  twelve  miles  in  length. 
As  soon  as  you  enter  these  profound  solitudes  you 
leave  man  behind,  and  the  blandishments  of  his 
hypocrisy  and  the  noise  of  his  battles  are  heard  no 
more. 

The  exceptions  to  this  solitude  are  only  found 
where  springs  and  rivulets  trickle  through  the  moun- 
tains and  make  oases  at  their  base.  Most  fa- 
mous among  these  are  "  The  Fountains  of  Jericho." 
Jericho  is  gone,  and  only  dirty  Arab  hovels  now 
occupy  its  site.  But  the  fountains  are  still  there  ; 
and  what  would  be  an  oasis  is  there  if  it  did  not  run 
to  bushes  and  sedge.  But  here  in  our  Saviour's  day 
rose  the  goodly  city  itself,  called  sometimes  the  City 
of  Palms.  It  stood  within  the  great  valley,  but  hugged 
the  base  of  the  mountain,  commanding  a  fertile  plain 
covered  with  groves  and  gardens  which  the  fountains 
had  rescued  from  the  desert.  Through  a  gorge  of 
the  mountain  lay  the  road  to  Jerusalem  twenty  miles 
off,  leading  around  splintered  rocks  and  through 
gloomy  and  shaggy  defiles,  the  haunt  of  thieves  and 
robbers.    Jericho  was  a  city  of  priests  and  Levites, 


THE  HOMES  OF  JESUS.  263 

it  being  a  favorite  resort  of  the  officials  at  Jerusalem 
when  not  on  duty  in  the  service  of  the  temple. 

Passing  through  this  road  from  Jerusalem  and  en- 
tering the  desert  through  Jericho,  the  traveller,  in  our 
Saviour's  time,  would  soon  leave  the  palm  groves  and 
gardens  behind.  As  he  travels  towards  the  Jordan  he 
passes  over  five  miles  of  desert  and  comes  to  a  ferry, 
by  which  the  Jordan  must  be  crossed.  If  he  is  in 
quest  of  a  solitude  still  more  profound,  or  an  isolation 
from  Jewish  priestcraft  still  more  perfect,  he  will  cross 
over  by  this  ferry  into  Peraea  beyond  the  Jordan. 
There  is  no  village  on  the  opposite  side,  but  only  a 
ferry-house,  with  perhaps  a  few  buildings.  This  is 
the  place  anciently  called  Bethabara,  which  means 
simply  the  ford,  or  place  of  passage,  but  which  seems 
afterwards  to  have  taken  the  name  of  Bethany-over- 
the-Jordan.  Coming  hither,  the  traveller  has  put  both 
the  Jordan  and  the  wilderness  of  Judaea  between  him- 
self and  the  busy  Jewish  world.  But  he  has  only 
come  into  a  remoter  solitude  and  into  wilderness  still. 
It  is  desert  for  two  miles  between  the  Jordan  and  the 
mountains  of  Peraea  and  all  the  way  up  and  down 
the  river.  Opposite  are  the  hills  from  whose  summit 
the  promised  land  broke  on  the  rapt  vision  of  Moses, 
and  this  Bethabara  is  the  identical  ford  which  his 
knights  of  the  Ram's-horn  crossed  over  to  take 
Jericho. 

And  in  this  vicinity  was  one  of  the  dwelling-places 
of  Jesus  for  some  time  before  he  went  to  Capernaum, 


264  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

and  to  ^\^hich  he  resorted  again  and  again,  both  for 
the  opening  of  the  inner  heavens  and  for  escape  from 
the  snares  of  men.^  He  did  not  merely  come  hither 
to  John's  baptism  ;  he  was  dwelling  here  while  that 
great  preacher  was  declaring  his  message.  He  came 
hither  from  Judaea  when  tired  of  Jewish  bigotry  and 
hypocrisy.  He  made  this  his  abiding-place  till  re- 
plenished anew  from  the  Divine  armory,  when  he 
went  forth  for  fresh  strokes  on  the  flint  of  Jewish 
malice  and  hate.  Up  to  the  time  of  John's  arrest 
and  imprisonment,  when  he  left  for  Galilee,  this  was 
his  most  frequent  place  of  retirement  and  abode,  and 
this  was  his  starting-place  for  new  journeys  into 
Judaea,  His  ministry  began  at  Jerusalem  agreeably 
to  the  theory  of  Scripture  that  salvation  should  come 
out  of  the  heart  of  Judaism  and  thence  extend  over 
the  world.  After  John's  arrest,  and  his  ministry  had 
changed  its  circuit  for  Galilee,  still  he  came  hither  to 
his  retreat  in  the  valley  of  the  Jordan,  as  if  its  springs 

1  See  John  i.  38, 39  ;  x.  40  ;  xi.  54.  Compare  Matt.  xix.  19  ;  Mark 
X.  I,  46.  In  the  passage  (Matt.  iv.  13)  where  Jesus  is  said  to  dwell  in 
Capernaum,  we  read,  Kar^Kr^a-eu,  —  he  housed  there.  But  where  he 
is  said  to  dweU  in  the  desert  we  have  (John  i.  39),  ytieVet,  —  he  remained 
there,  suggesting  a  less  fixed  abode,  perhaps  in  movable  tents.  The 
town  called  Ephraim,  near  the  desert  where  Jesus  went  and  dwelt 
(5t€Tp<j8e,  spent  the  time)  to  conceal  himself  from  the  Jews,  is  of  un- 
certain locality.  Perhaps  it  was  the  ancient  city  of  that  name  near 
Jericho.  It  would  seem  that  he  spent  the  time,  not  in  the  city,  which 
would  be  no  place  of  concealment,  but  in  the  desert  near  by,  and  that 
in  emerging  from  his  concealment  he  passed  through  Jericho.  See 
Mark  x.  46. 


THE  HOMES  OF  JESUS.  26$ 

and  rocks  and  solitudes  had  been  made  sweet  by 
angel  ministries  and  the  communings  of  sabbatic 
hours.  In  these  solitudes  the  inner  heavens  first 
opened  on  his  sight ;  and  in  these  again  they  opened 
in  yet  more  solemn  grandeur,  and  over  long  reaches 
of  prophecy  just  before  he  started  on  his  last  journey 
to  Jerusalem  ;  for  it  was  from  these  retreats,  where 
he  had  remained  for  some  time,  that  he  went  up  to 
the  last  Passover,  knowing  that  he  went  as  the  Lamb 
of  God  for  sacrifice.  After  finally  breaking  away 
from  his  home  at  Nazareth,  Bethabara,  or  some  spot 
near  this  ferry  of  the  Jordan,  was  his  point  of  depart- 
ure for  his  mission  into  Judasa,  as  Capernaum  was  his 
point  of  departure  for  his  mission  in  Galilee.  Even 
when  passing  from  Galilee  into  Judaea,  his  route  often 
lay  through  these  profound  solitudes,  and  there  he 
would  abide  for  a  time  before  committing  himself 
anew  to  that  hot-bed  of  sanctimonious  iniquity  at 
Jerusalem.  Sometimes  in  these  retreats  the  people 
followed  him  and  sought  him  out  to  be  cured  of 
their  diseases  or  to  hang  upon  his  speech. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

JESUS    IN    THE   DESERT. 

JOHN  had  stationed  himself  by  the  ferry,  beyond 
the  Jordan,  and  near  the  great  thoroughfare 
through  the  Desert.  Thither  the  people  streamed  in 
crowds  from  both  sides  of  the  river  to  the  scene  of 
what  in  modern  phrase  would  be  called  the  Great 
Revival  of  the  time.  John's  was  the  first  word  since 
the  days  of  the  old  prophets  which  had  thoroughly 
shattered  the  crust  of  the  Jewish  formalism,  thrilling 
the  masses  with  an  agonizing  consciousness  of  spirit- 
ual want.  In  the  natural  language  of  hyperbole  used 
by  the  New  Testament  writers,  "  Jerusalem  and  all 
Judaea,  and  all  the  country  adjacent  to  the  Jordan," 
came  to  his  preaching  and  were  immersed  by  him  in 
the  waters  of  the  river  as  the  symbol  of  their  repent- 
ance and  reformation. 

Jesus  came  also  to  Bethabara  from  his  home  in 
Nazareth,  not,  as  we  shall  see,  merely  to  receive  bap- 
tism from  John.  The  Divine  Idea,  for  whose  realiza- 
tion he  came  into  the  world,  must  have  grown  urgent 
within  him  by  this  time,  and  he  must  have  seen  that 
the  word  of  John,  which  had  shaken  all  the  syna- 
gogues out  of  their  sleep,  was  preparing  the  way  for 


JESUS  IN  THE  DESERT.  26/ 

the  new  kingdom  of  God  to  be  ushered  in.  Hence 
he  gave  his  sanction  to  John's  preparatory  work,  and 
his  personal  compHance  with  it,  as  if  saying,  "  This 
is  not  the  work  of  one  who  hath  a  demon  and  is  mad, 
as  some  of  your  magnates  affirm,  but  work  which 
comes  in  the  orderly  course  of  Divine  Providence." 
He  left  Nazareth  and  appeared  at  Bethabara. 

It  is  necessary  here  to  unfold  a  principle  of  inter- 
pretation, without  which  we  shall  find  ourselves 
stumbling  at  every  step,  not  only  at  the  beginning 
here  of  our  Saviour's  public  life,  but  through  every 
stage  of  it  to  the  close.  We  must  forget  here  again 
and  leave  behind  us  our  cold  and  sensuous  occident- 
alism and  enter  largely  into  the  thought  and  the  faith 
of  the  Orient.  Language  which  with  us  has  sunk 
into  the  baldest  materialism,  or  else  has  been  frozen 
into  the  coldest  and  the  hardest  of  philosophical  ab- 
stractions, to  the  spiritualized  Hebrew  mind,  much 
more  to  the  mind  of  Jesus,  was  preserved  from  all 
such  perversion.  For  instance,  our  words  heaven, 
hell,  angel,  demon,  Satan,  and  their  correlates,  mean 
with  us  localities  in  space  and  beings  of  material  cor- 
poreity ;  or  if  we  say  they  cannot  mean  that,  we  pro- 
ceed to  discharge  them  of  substantial  realism,  leaving 
nothing  but  a  nominalism  that  floats  vague  and 
empty  in  the  air.  The  New  Testament  writers  and 
speakers  fall  into  neither  of  these  errors,  but  are  clear 
alike  of  both. 

We  are  to  remember  here  —  and  we  only  restate 


268  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  principle  of  our  opening  chapter  —  that  there 
are  two  orders  of  existence,  —  one  natural  and  on  a 
level  with  the  senses  ;  the  other  supernatural  and 
beyond  their  sweep  and  range.  Men  hold  commerce 
with  the  first  through  their  material  organism  ;  they 
hold  commerce  with  the  second,  if  at  all,  through  an 
interior  and  higher  one.  Death  discharges  immortal 
beings  from  their  material  coverings,  but  it  does  not 
extinguish  their  personaUty.  They  are  men  still,  and 
not  abstract  ideas  of  men  existing  only  in  the  gener- 
alizations of  human  thought,  and  the  corruption  of 
the  sepulchres. 

To  understand  the  Realism  of  the  New  Testament, 
we  must  remember  that  its  supernatural  world  is  not 
one  of  abstractions.  It  is  one  of  forms  and  substan- 
ces not  less  than  this  ;  and  for  the  very  reason  that  it 
is  not  material  and  subject  to  hard  material  law,  it  is  a 
more  perfect  symbolization  of  Divine  truth,  and  more 
pliant  to  envisage  the  supreme  excellence  and  beauty. 
The  words  "  heaven  "  and  "  kingdom  of  heaven  "  de- 
scribe, it  is  true,  a  state  of  the  purified  soul  here  in 
its  earthly  condition  ;  but  if  we  suppose  that  in  the 
New  Testament  realism  they  mean  nothing  more, 
but  therein  are  shriveled  to  an  abstraction,  there  is  a 
great  gulf  between  its  realm  of  thought  and  ours. 
Involved  essentially  in  the  conception  is  the  idea  of 
the  supernal  abodes,  the  angelic  societies  above  us 
and  yet  near  us  when  we  become  like  them,  and 
whether  visible  or  invisible,  imparting  to  us  or  shar- 
inor  with  us  the  shinin^s  of  the  eternal  peace. 


JESUS  IN  THE  DESERT.  269 

"  Heaven  opened,"  therefore,  does  not  mean  merely, 
in  the  language  of  those  times,  a  more  vivid  appre- 
hension, mentally,  of  abstract  truth.  That  may  be 
included  and  implied,  but  a  great  deal  more  is  also 
implied.  It  means  that  the  inner  sight  has  been  so 
touched  and  clarified  that  the  heavenly  scenery  lies 
objectively  around  it ;  where  the  prints  and  copies  of 
that  truth  itself  image  it  forth  more  perfectly  and 
divinely,  just  as  they  do  to  those  who  have  passed 
out  of  time  and  space  into  the  open  prospect  of  the 
eternal  realities.  We  may  say  that  this  is  imagina- 
tion, and  we  shall  say  so  if  we  believe  with  the  Sad- 
ducees  that  there  are  no  tiers  of  substantial  being 
above  the  flats  of  nature ;  but  we  must  not  project 
our  philosophy  into  the  New  Testament  and  freeze 
down  its  language  into  figures  of  speech,  when  it  is 
plain  from  its  whole  pneumatology,  that  the  writers 
do  not  intend  a  mere  play  with  rhetoric,  but  a  de- 
scription of  things  heard  and  seen. 

There  were  two  classes  of  Hebrew  prophets.  There 
were  those  who  simply  uttered  the  word  which  came 
to  them  with  a  "Thus  saith  the  Lord,"  and  there 
were  those  whose  inspiration  passed  into  seership  or 
open  vision.  Elijah  was  not  only  prophet  but  seer. 
John,  who  came  in  the  spirit  and  power  of  Elijah,  but 
was  greater  than  he,  was  also  both  prophet  and  seer. 
He  was  such,  according  to  the  narrative,  by  the  divine 
gift  which  commissioned  him  for  his  work ;  but  his 
ascetic  and   contemplative  mode  of  life  would  tend 


270  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

inevitably  to  reveal  it  strongly  and  clearly  to  his  con- 
sciousness. 

The  world  was  expecting  a  deliverer.  Not  the 
Jews  only  but  the  devout  of  all  nations  believed  that 
a  great  crisis  was  near,  and  watched  with  aching  eyes 
for  the  tokens  of  the  coming  man.  The  influx  from 
the  higher  world  of  causes,  prognostic  of  great 
changes,  was  urgent  now.  But  in  the  mind  of  the 
Baptist  it  took  voice  distinct  and  articulate  and  came 
as  the  voice  of  the  Lord.  He  knew  Jesus  well  but 
he  did  not  know  him  as  the  Messiah.  He  only 
knew  him  as  a  man  wonderfully  endowed,  in  whose 
presence  he  felt  overshadowed  and  subdued.  But  he 
knew  and  felt  that  his  own  work  was  only  external 
and  provisional,  and  that  a  Power  which  wrought 
deeper  and  more  universal  than  his  baptism  of  water 
must  melt  down  the  heart  of  the  world  and  shape 
it  in  heavenly  moulds.  The  impression  upon  his 
mind,  divinely  given,  had  become  so  full  and  over- 
powering as  to  become  languaged  in  the  depths  of 
his  soul.  It  was  in  substance  this,  "  The  man  for 
whom  the  nations  wait  will  be  signalized  to  your 
apprehension.  You  will  know  him,  for  to  your  vision 
the  Holy  Spirit  will  descend  and  abide  upon  him. 
Understand  then  that  the  person  who  will  thus  be 
designated  is  the  expected  Messiah,  who  will  take  up 
the  work  which  you  have  only  begun,  and  baptize  the 
world  with  fire.  He  will  not  only  reform  its  manners 
without,  but  purge  it  of  evil  within."     Of  course  the 


JESUS  IN  THE  DESERT.  2/1 

Holy  Spirit  working  subjectively  in  the  mind  of  Jesus 
would  have  been  no  token  to  John.  What  John  was 
looking  for  was  an  open  vision  of  that  Divine  Sphere 
above  and  within  the  sensuous  and  earthly,  which 
would  infold  the  Son  of  God,  and  in  which  the  power 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  give  purity  and  peace  would  be 
imaged  forth  by  appropriate  signs. 

John  was  burdened  with  this  thought  when  Jesus 
appeared  through  the  crowd  before  him  on  the  banks 
of  the  Jordan.  But  Jesus,  as  we  have  said,  had  not 
travelled  sixty  miles  from  Nazareth  merely  to  receive 
baptism  from  John.  It  is  plain  from  the  whole  con- 
nection that  his  dwelling-place  in  the  desert  was 
near  by ;  the  Proseucha  ^  to  which  he  had  already 
withdrawn  amid  the  profound  solitudes  of  the  valley, 
where  the  din  of  human  society  was  unheard  and 
nature  itself  no  longer  wooed  the  soul  outward 
through  the  senses  ;  where  "  the  weary  weight  of  all 
this  unintelligible  world  "  was  lightened  or  rolled 
away  ;  and  the  higher  world  emerged  through  the 
rifted  and  scattering  clouds.  After  such  ascent  into 
heaven  as  this,  Jesus  appeared  before  John.     Evi- 

1  A  Proseucha  among  the  Hebrew  people  was  simply  an  oratory,  or 
place  of  retirement  for  thought  and  devotion.  Sometimes  they  were 
on  mountains ;  sometimes  by  the  side  of  rivers.  Sometimes  they 
were  artificial,  simple  structures  open  at  the  top  to  the  sky  ;  some- 
times only  an  embowering  shade.  In  Acts  xvi.  13,  we  are  told  that 
Paul  and  his  companions  on  the  Sabbath  "  went  out  of  the  city  by  a 
river  side  where  prayer  was  wont  to  be  made  "  (o5  ivofii^cro  irpoaevxh 
flvai),  literally,  "  where  he  understood  that  there  was  a  Proseucha." 


2/2  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

dently  heaven  itself  was  in  sphering  Him  and  beam- 
ing from  his  face.  John  is  overcome  with  reverent 
emotion  :  "  I  have  more  need  to  be  baptized  by  thee." 
Jesus  replies,  "  It  becomes  us  to  fulfill  all  righteous- 
ness." Your  baptism  of  reformation  comes  first  in 
the  Divine  order  and  has  its  rightful  place. 

"  And  while  all  the  people  were  receiving  baptism, 
Jesus  also  being  baptized  and  praying,  the  heaven 
was  opened,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  in  a  bodily  form, 
descended  upon  him  like  a  dove,  and  a  voice  came 
from  heaven  saying,  *  Thou  art  my  beloved  Son,  with 
thee  I  am  well  pleased.' "     Luke  iii.  21,  22. 

"  Being  baptized  and  praying"  the  heaven  was 
opened.  Let  us  not  mistake.  Prayer  with  Jesus  was 
not  simply  a  verbal  petition.  It  was  passing  inward 
and  upward  out  of  the  realm  of  sense  into  the  broad 
disclosure  of  eternal  things.  He  has  described  it  as 
"  ascending  into  heaven,"  and  his  teachings  and  rev- 
elations out  of  that  high  state  as  "  coming  down 
from  heaven,"  and  the  normal  elevation  of  his  soul 
amid  the  eternal  serenities  and  perspectives  of  im- 
mortality as  being  or  dwelling  **in  heaven."  The 
heaven  was  opened,  to  whom  "i  Clearly  to  the  mind 
of  Jesus  into  which  the  Divine  influx  came  with 
such  fullness  and  power  as  to  take  voice  and  artic- 
ulation, and  over  whom  the  white  wmgs  hovering 
dove-like  symbolized  its  all-cleansing  and  peace- 
giving  work  through  a  Saviour's  mediation  ;  and 
to  the  mind  of  John  brought  into  this  open  vision 


JESUS  IN  TUB  DESERT.  2/3 

and  communion  where  the  promised  tokens  were 
disclosed  to  him.  "  I  saw  and  I  bear  witness  that 
this  is  the  Son  of  God."  He  knew  him  not  as  the 
Messiah  until  then.  Now  his  tone  changes  towards 
his  own  followers.  I  am  not  the  coming  Deliverer, 
but  He  is  already  among  you.  I  have  seen  Him 
though  you  cannot.  He  must  wax  and  I  must  wane. 
Once  in  his  lonely  prison  hours,  weary  with  what 
seemed  the  long  delay,  doubts  flitted  over  the  mind 
of  John  and  he  sent  to  Jesus  for  further  evidence.  It 
may  be  hoped  that  the  answer  he  received  reassured 
him  of  the  divine  authentication  in  the  heavenly 
vision  by  the  waters  of  the  Jordan. 

The  Spirit  remanded  Jesus  to  his  solitude.  A  great 
conflict  was  inevitable.  Such  incoming  of  the  Divine 
truth,  glory,  and  power  through  the  inmost  conscious- 
ness towards  their  ultimations  in  the  outward  life 
could  not  be  without  meeting  and  waking  into  armed 
resistance  all  the  hereditary  tendencies  of  the  Jewish 
mind.  All  these  had  been  subsumed  in  the  maternal 
humanity  received  through  Mary.  They  had  grown 
with  the  growth  and  strengthened  with  the  strength 
of  the  sensuous  nature  which  for  thirty  years  had 
drank  in  the  glories  of  this  lower  world.  The  hered- 
itary proclivities  of  a  long  line  of  ancestry  running 
away  up  through  Jewish  kings  and  priests  yearning 
for  worldly  empire  and  ecclesiastical  rule,  looking 
towards  a  Messianic  kingdom,  which,  beginning  at 
Jerusalem,  should  overspread  the  earth  and  absorb  all 
iS 


274  ^^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

other  kingdoms  into  itself,  all  these  were  waked  up 
as  if  by  a  voice  sweeping  down  into  the  soul  as  the  cu- 
mulative urgencies  of  a  thousand  years.  The  posses- 
sion of  superhuman  power  had  now  come  to  Jesus,  no 
longer  in  the  dim  twilight  of  consciousness,  but  in  its 
noonday  brightness.  It  was  power,  compared  with 
which  that  of  David  and  Solomon,  the  pride  and  boast 
of  the  Jewish  annals,  was  contemptible.  We  do  not 
know  of  any  chapter  in  history  more  true  to  nature 
and  bearing  more  indubitable  marks  of  reality  than 
that  of  the  temptation  of  Jesus.  It  never  could  have 
come  within  the  experience  of  feeble  and  shallow  na- 
tures, but  only  those  which  are  deeply  and  broadly 
representative,  and  which  take  up  and  compress  vast 
provinces  and  ages  of  history  into  their  own.  In 
such  as  these  the  influx  of  heaven  becomes  strong  as 
it  meets  and  conquers  the  efflux  of  hell. 

Let  us  pause  a  moment  at  the  words  "  devil "  and 
"  satan."  They  never  mean,  in  any  canonical  Scrip- 
ture, a  fallen  angel.  Nor  again  do  they  mean  "  the 
abstract  principle  of  moral  evil."  Neither  Jesus  nor 
his  biographers  know  anything  of  these  philosophi- 
cal nonentities.  To  them  the  demon- world,  no  less 
than  the  angel,  was  real,  active,  and  personal,  im- 
breathing  through  the  souls  of  men  and  projecting 
infernal  sorceries  through  their  minds  and  imagina- 
tions. It  was  composed  of  the  spirits  of  bad  men 
who  had  lived  in  the  flesh,  and  were,  therefore,  hu- 
man,  like    ourselves,    but    unrcgenerate.     Like   the 


JESUS  IN  THE  DESERT.  2/5 

angel  world,  it  lay  proximate  to  this,  but  on  the  side 
of  our  lusts  and  evils,  which  it  breathed  upon  and 
fanned  into  flame.  The  words  devil  and  satan  de- 
scribed originally  the  supposed  prince  of  this  king- 
dom of  evil ;  but  they  ceased  to  become  mere  proper 
names,  and  stood  simply  for  the  impersonation  of  all 
the  seductive  influence  from  the  realm  of  darkness ; 
and  on  the  other  hand  such  proper  names  as  Gabriel 
and  Michael  might  denote  perhaps  the  influx  of  the 
an  gel -world  itself  But  the  New  Testament  writers 
give  no  sanction  to  the  childish  superstition  of  devils 
assuming  material  bodies,  and  in  that  shape  set  free 
on  the  earth  for  temptation  and  mischief 

The  Spirit  remanded  Jesus  to  his  solitudes.  Heights 
of  exaltation  and  depths  of  depression  and  trial  are 
u  lavoiaable  i  i  minds  whose  range  is  large  enough  to 
include  the  profoundest  workings  of  God.  Having 
just  now  become  conscious  of  most  divine  endow- 
ments, the  whole  spirit  of  Judaism,  from  Abraham 
down  to  Mary,  rose  up  in  his  soul  to  clutch  these  ce- 
lestial weapons,  and  wield  them  only  for  Jewish  ends. 
Yes,  farther,  the  awakened  propensities  of  human  na- 
ture, including  its  hereditary  proclivities  from  Adam 
down,  sought  to  bring  these  endowments  into  the 
service  of  self  alone,  and  so  place  the  son  of  Mary 
in  conflict  with  the  Son  of  God,  and,  if  possible,  sub- 
ject the  latter  to  his  will. 

We  follow  Matthew's  order.  The  first  temptation 
came  in  this  form  :  "  Turn  these  stones  into  loaves 


2/6  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

and  live  by  them  alone."  Or,  dropping  the  language 
of  parable,  Be  satisfied  with  the  lowest  and  most  ex- 
ternal life  of  sense,  and  with  that  alone,  for  stones  are 
the  lowest  grade  of  external  things.  What  visions 
of  ease  and  self-gratification  are  here  comprehensively 
described  !  all  of  which  could  pass  at  once  to  their 
realization  if  the  divine  power  newly-awakened  could 
be  subsidized  to  such  an  end.  Such  a  course  were 
compatible  with  all  the  pride  of  life,  including  the 
pride  of  knowledge,  the  pride  of  philanthropy,  all 
tending,  however,  to  exalt  self  and  surround  it  with 
worldly  decorations.  Such  was  the  tempting  path 
now  obvious,  and  it  led  to  no  cross,  no  conflict,  and 
no  sacrifice. 

The  next  temptation  was  deeper  and  more  subtle. 
It  placed  Jesus  in  the  Holy  City  and  on  the  pinnacle 
of  its  temple ;  in  other  words,  at  the  very  summit  of 
the  Jewish  ecclesiasticism.  The  highest  exaltation 
to  which  the  Jewish  religious  system  could  elevate 
him  now  rose  upon  his  view.  All  the  honors  of  its 
high  priesthood,  enlarged  beyond  its  ancient  pomp 
and  splendor,  were  within  his  grasp.  Already  he  had 
confounded  the  Doctors  in  the  temple  by  his  preco- 
cious wisdom,  and  now  a  wisdom  more  pervasive  and 
comprehending  than  that  of  the  whole  Sanhedrim,  or 
all  the  scholars  of  Hillel,  was  his.  It  lay  in  his  power 
to  raise  Judaism  to  a  fame  which  would  outshine  its 
brightest  days  in  the  past,  if,  instead  of  break'.ng  its 
forms  in  pieces,  he  would  throw  his  Spirit  into  them 


JESUS  IN  THE  DESERT.  27/ 

and  make  them  more  glorious  than  ever.  Its  priest- 
hood would  renew  its  fading  lustre,  and  all  its  honors 
would  cluster  around  his  person.  No  conception  of 
ours  at  this  day  is  adequate  to  the  fact  which  is  here 
tersely  set  forth  ;  a  temptation  that  winds  into  the 
most  hidden  recesses  of  human  nature.  Ecclesiasti- 
cal ambition  is  the  most  devilish  of  all,  for  it  perverts 
a  more  interior  and  more  sacred  principle  than  any 
other,  appears  always  in  sanctimonious  guises,  and 
secretes  a  more  specious  and  deadly  poison.  But 
Jewish  ecclesiasticism  excelled  all  others  in  this  re- 
spect ;  and  now  the  pride  and  conceit  of  a  long  and 
splendid  priestly  line,  swelling  and  gathering  force 
with  every  new  generation,  was  sending  its  last  efflux 
into  the  mind  of  Jesus.  Had  it  prevailed  it  would 
have  placed  him  in  Moses'  seat,  the  most  authorita- 
tive, the  most  accomplished,  the  most  honored  of  all 
the  Pharisees. 

The  remaining  temptation,  though  not  so  subtle, 
appealed  to  an  instinct  more  universally  dangerous. 
It  placed  Jesus  at  the  summit  of  Jewish  national  re- 
nown. It  showed  him  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world, 
and  he  at  their  head  as  the  long  looked-for  temporal 
Messiah.  The  magnificent  national  dream  could  now 
be  made  actual.  It  had  become  an  essential  of  Jewish 
faith  engrained  in  the  heart  of  every  loyal  man  and 
woman,  that  the  boundaries  of  Judaea  were  to  widen 
and  widen  over  the  earth,  and  over  the  isles  of  the 
sea,  and  over  all  peoples,  till  Jerusalem  should  be  the 


2/8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

capital  of  the  world,  till  "  the  Gentiles  should  come 
to  its  light,  and  kings  to  the  brightness  of  its  rising." 
The  grand  old  spiritual  promises  had  sunk  from  their 
meaning  into  the  grossest  literalism,  and  pampered 
the  national  pride  with  the  expectation  of  unbounded 
empire.  It  was  kept  alive  continually  as  they  an- 
swered "  Amen "  in  the  synagogues  to  the  ancient 
prophecies.  "The  sons  of  thine  oppressors  shall 
come  bending  before  thee :  they  that  despised  thee 
shall  fall  down  at  thy  feet."  ^  How  this  vision  flamed 
up  to  its  highest  grandeur  as  it  took  body  and  shape 
in  a  mind  like  that  of  Jesus,  till  "  all  the  kingdoms 
of  the  world  in  a  moment  of  time  "  were  seen  crowd- 
ing to  his  standard  in  endless  ranks ;  how  the  stream 
of  national  pride  pouring  through  the  hearts  of  all  the 
Jewish  kings  into  his  was  urgent  to  grasp  the  divine 
weapons  now  fairly  in  his  hands,  subjugate  the  Ro- 
man oppressor,  and  inaugurate  the  universal  reign 
which  all  the  prophets  had  foretold,  —  all  this  we 
may  faintly  imagine  from  our  knowledge  of  hereditary 
proclivities,  which  set  in  strongest  and  swiftest  tides 
through  the  largest  and  most  receptive  natures. 

Forty  days,  say  the  records,  these  temptations 
continued,  or,  as  Luke  says,  till  the  devil,  "having 
come  to  an  end  of  every  temptation,"  left  Him. 
Forty  days,  in  Scripture  usage,  is  an  indefinite  num- 
ber, and  means  simply,  as  Luke  intimates,  a  time, 
whether  longer  or  shorter,  during  which   the  thing 

^  Isaiah  Ix,  14. 


ySSUS  IN  THE  DESERT.  2^g 

appointed  to  it  is  accomplished  and  complete.  "  The 
forty  days'  temptations,"  as  we  understand,  are  the 
terse  and  graphic  summing  up  of  the  whole  conflict 
up  to  the  time  of  the  pubhc  ministry  of  Jesus,  —  the 
conflict  in  which  the  descending  heavens  met  and 
subdued  the  principles  of  earth  and  hell,  and  thus 
found  their  unobstructed  ultimation  in  his  mind  and 
in  his  life.  The  abounding  peace  which  followed, 
where,  we  are  told,  that  as  Satan  left  him,  angels 
came  and  ministered  unto  him,  is  also  strictly 
accordant  with  all  our  human  experience.  Those 
blessed  ministries  come  like  tranquillity  after  storms, 
consequent  on  all  our  moral  and  spiritual  victories. 
They  come  to  us  in  the  mellow  sunshine  of  the  heart, 
flung  from  the  face  of  God  and  the  invisible  presence 
of  those  who  reflect  his  beams  ;  they  came  to  him 
not  only  in  the  peace  within,  but  in  the  "  heavens 
opened,"  amid  whose  visible  serenities  he  won  his 
abiding-place. 

It  is  plain  that  the  narration  of  these  conflicts 
comes  originally  from  the  lips  of  Jesus  in  that  com* 
prehensive  language  of  parable  which  he  was  wont 
to  employ.  They  have  the  air  of  most  intense  reality ; 
they  were  witnessed  by  no  mortal  eye,  and  they  are 
the  last  things  which  his  disciples  afterwards  would 
have  invented  or  imagined  with  the  intent  of  glorify- 
ing their  Master.  Mark  puts  the  whole  in,  but  very 
concisely,  evidently  not  knowing  what  to  make  of  it. 
John  omits  it,  for   the   plain   reason  that   he  wrote 


280  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

with  a  full  knowledge  that  the  other  three  Gospels 
were  in  possession  of  all  the  churches,  and  that  this 
history  already  had  been  thrice  told.  John,  of  all  the 
others,  would  have  entered  most  profoundly  into  its 
vast  spiritual  import.  Luke  seems  to  have  done  this 
more  than  either  Matthew  or  Mark,  and  Luke  was 
probably  in  communication  with  John.  Portions  of 
Luke's  Gospel  are  essentially  the  narrative  of  the 
beloved  disciple. 

Up  to  this  time  we  have  been  following  Jesus  in 
the  common  and  blending  light  which  the  four  evan- 
gelists have  thrown  upon  his  path.  We  now  come 
to  a  point  where  the  synoptics  leave  us,  and  where 
for  some  time,  and  for  the  most  part  always  in  his 
more  private  walks,  John  is  our  only  guide.  We  ask 
the  reader's  attention  now  to  the  following  points, 
which,  if  carefully  observed,  will  verify  to  him  as  he 
reads  on  how  these  biographies  interlace  each  other 
with  most  remarkable  congruity. 

I.  The  distinctive  Messianic  work  of  Jesus  begins 
at  the  close  of  the  temptation  scene.  The  Word  had 
not  merely  glimmered  in  his  consciousness  ;  it  had 
not  merely  emerged  into  full  intellectual  brightness, 
but  it  had  "become  flesh."  It  had  cleared  off  all  the 
hindrances  of  the  inherited  Jewish  nature,  and  now 
not  only  in  the  inmost  but  the  outermost  life,  in 
mind  and  will  and  action  so  far  as  concerns  his  mis- 
sion, Jesus  is  the  Wisdom  and  the  Power  of  God. 
From   this   complete   Messianic   consciousness,   his 


JESUS  IN  THE  DESERT  28 1 

special  work  begins,  and  it  divides  iOelf  into  two 
portions :  into  his  ministry,  which  was  more  private 
and  personal,  and  his  ministry,  which  was  more  pub- 
lic and  organized. 

2.  His  private  and  personal  ministry  began  first,  as 
of  course  it  would.  It  was  for  some  time  informal 
and  tentative.  It  was  mainly  in  Jerusalem  and  its 
environs,  in  that  yearning  toward  his  own  people  to 
save  them  first  from  the  wrath  impending  over  the 
nation.  This  personal  ministry  covers,  at  least,  the 
first  year  of  his  Messianic  work.  During  this  time 
he  had  no  orga^iized  band  of  followers.  A  few  in- 
timate friends  who  believed  in  him,  were  generally 
with  him,  and  travelled  with  him,  and  among  them 
and  most  cherished  of  all,  was  the  beloved  John. 
In  this  personal  and  more  informal  ministry  in  and 
about  Jerusalem  he  encountered  always  the  bigotry 
of  the  ruling  ecclesiastical  power,  and  acted  under 
threats  against  his  life.  There  was  no  possibility 
here  of  any  organized  public  work.  His  home,  thus 
far,  was  partly  at  Nazareth,  partly  in  the  desert, 
whither  he  would  withdraw  for  concealment. 

3.  Soon  after  the  arrest  and  imprisonment  of  the 
Baptist,  he  removed  to  Capernaum.  There  his 
public  ministry  commenced.  He  was  thronged  by 
the  multitudes,  and  out  of  these  he  selected  and  or- 
ganized two  separate  bands  of  disciples,  the  Twelve 
and  the  Seventy,  whom  he  indoctrinated  more  thor- 
oughly, and  on  whom  he  conferred  miraculous  pow- 


282  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

ers.  Through  these  he  evangelized  the  whole  of 
GaUlee.  But  even  here  we  must  not  imagine  him 
travelHng  about  with  twelve  men.  They  dispersed 
over  the  whole  province,  appearing  generally  in  the 
synagogues.  The  Twelve  went,  it  would  seem,  indi- 
vidually ;  the  Seventy,  two  and  two.  The  latter  was 
a  temporary,  the  former  a  permanent  organization. 
Both  would  return  to  Jesus  and  report  the  fruits  of 
their  mission,  but  only  on  special  occasions  were  the 
Twelve  together  with  Jesus.  So  much  we  gather 
clearly  from  the  account  given  of  this  organized 
work  without  knowing  the  minute  details.  Two  of 
the  synoptics  confine  their  narrative  almost  entirely 
to  the  public  ministry  in  Galilee,  till  they  come  to  the 
tragic  consummation  at  the  last  Passover,  for  the  sim- 
ple reason  that  here,  with  his  public  ministry,  they 
were  personally  concerned,  and  here  only  were  eye 
and  ear  witnesses. 

4.  But  we  must  not  imagine  that  while  his  organ- 
ized missionaries  were  at  work,  Jesus  was  idle  at 
Capernaum.  His  work  in  and  around  Capernaum 
was  notorious,  and  the  synoptics  have  detailed  it. 
But  this  was  not  all.  He  did  not  abandon  Judaea, 
but  his  private  personal  ministry  he  prosecuted  there 
still.  People  were  there  who  believed  in  him,  whom 
his  first  ministry  had  deeply  moved,  who  had  clung 
to  him  with  devoted  love,  and  several  times  from  his 
home  at  Capernaum,  as  before  from  his  home  at 
Nazareth,  he  went  up  to  the  capital.     But  he  always 


JESUS  IN  THE  DESERT.  283 

went  privately  and  cautiously,  often  withdrawing  of 
a  sudden  either  to  the  desert  or  back  into  Galilee. 
He  went  up  to  the  festivals,  but  except  at  the  last 
and  fatal  Passover,  he  went  after  the  crowds  had 
gone,  and  followed  on  with  the  least  possible  demon- 
stration. We  must  not  imagine  him  marching  up  to 
Jerusalem  with  the  Twelve,  but  appearing  with  one 
or  two  friends,  among  whom  always  was  the  beloved 
John.  These  were  episodes  in  his  public  ministry  in 
Galilee,  grateful  to  the  heart  of  Jesus,  and  doubly 
grateful  to  some  homes  in  and  about  Jerusalem,  which 
received  and  welcomed  him  with  blissful  and  tender 
recollections  of  his  first  private  and  personal  ministry 
there. 

5.  These  points,  carefully  kept  in  mind,  will  reveal 
an  organic  unity  in  the  narratives,  and  in  the  life  of 
Jesus  :  and  they  will  demonstrate  a  design  which 
runs  through  the  whole  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  They 
will  plainly  show  that  the  author  of  it  wrote  with  the 
other  three  open  before  him,  and  with  the  intent 
always  to  complement  them.  The  fourth  Gospel  thus 
becomes  an  indorsement  of  the  other  three.  Any 
fabricator  would  have  drawn  upon  the  synoptics,  or 
imitated  them  in  some  way.  But  there  is  not  an  in- 
stance, as  we  shall  see,  where  this  has  been  done,  and 
the  early  tradition  of  the  Church  —  hardly  a  tradition, 
for  it  is  so  early  and  fresh  that  it  amounts  almost  to 
personal  testimony — has  the  fullest  internal  evidence 
of  its  truth  running  sometimes  into  delicate  threads 


234  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

of  circumstantial  proof— that  John,  seeing  what  the 
synoptics  had  written,  approved  of  it,  but  wrote  a 
fourth  Gospel  to  supply  what  they  had  left  out  of  the 
early  ministry  of  Jesus,  and  what  pertained  more  ex 
clusively  to  his  Divinity. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE   LAST   MEETING   BY   THE  JORDAN. 

THE  conflict  was  over.  The  forty  days  of  temp- 
tation were  accomplished,  and  the  first  dawn- 
ing heaven  had  broken  through  his  soul  with  its 
angelic  peace,  and  with  the  clearness  and  the  fervors 
of  noonday.  Now  that  the  victory  of  the  inward 
over  the  outward  was  accomplished,  the  Word  was  in 
last  things  as  well  as  first,  and  the  Messianic  con- 
sciousness was  plenary  and  complete.  It  is  easy  to 
imagine  what  peaceful  majesty  and  command  this 
must  have  given  to  his  personal  bearing. 

The  "  forty  days  "  of  conflict  may  have  been  many 
months,  for  aught  we  know,  of  high  communings  and 
victories.  They  denote  the  closing  period,  "  the  end 
of  every  temptation,"  when  Jesus  reappeared  on  the 
banks  of  the  Jordan  where  John  was  still  prosecuting 
his  ministry  with  a  school  of  disciples  gathered  about 
him.  Some  of  them  evidently  had  become  temporary 
dwellers  in  the  desert,  with  their  tents  pitched  along 
the  shores  of  the  Jordan  ;  for  men  were  there  from 
remote  Galilee,  seventy  miles  away,  drawn  and  sub- 
dued by  the  electric  power  of  the  Baptist,  and  num- 
bered among  his  personal  followers.     Among  them 


286  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

were  two  brothers,  Simon  and  Andrew,  and  two  other 
brothers,  James  and  John,  the  fathers  of  whom  were 
partners  in  the  fisheries  at  Bethsaida,  on  the  north- 
western shore  of  the  GaUlean  lake.  PhiUp  also  was 
there  from  the  same  place,  also  a  disciple  of  the  Bap- 
tist. 

John  had  stirred  the  country  so  deeply,  that  when 
he  was  organizing  a  school  of  followers,  some  anxiety 
was  felt  at  Jerusalem  by  the  proper  authorities  as  to 
what  the  issue  would  be.  Who  was  this  wild  prophet 
of  the  Desert,  and  was  he  going  to  subvert  the  old 
order  of  things  ?  A  delegation  was  appointed,  prob- 
ably by  the  Sanhedrim,  to  go  and  sift  the  matter  and 
report.  They  appeared  before  John,  and  put  him 
under  examination. 

John  remembers  the  descending  vision  which  a  few 
months  before  had  illumined  the  desert :  but  the  del- 
egation of  Pharisees  could  not  have  been  much  en- 
lightened by  the  final  answer :  — 

"  I  baptize  in  water  unto  repentance,  for  whether 
Jew  or  Gentile,  you  all  need  it  alike ;  but  there  is  One 
among  you  whom  you  do  not  know ;  who  is  coming 
after  me,  and  whose  sandals  I  am  not  worthy  to  un- 
bind, and  who  will  baptize  you  in  the  fires  of  the 
Holy  Spirit." 

The  day  after  this  interview,  Jesus,  emerging  from 
his  solitude,  appears  a  second  time  before  the  Bap- 
tist. We  infer  that  the  delegation  from  Jerusalem 
were  still  present.    John  sees  Jesus  coming,  and  says 


THE  LAST  MEETING  BY  THE  JORDAN.      287 

to  them  :  "There  is  the  man  I  spoke  of  yesterday  — 
the  Lamb  of  God  who  takes  away  the  sin  of  the 
world.  I  know  this  by  tokens  which  cannot  deceive. 
He  who  sent  me  to  preach  and  baptize,  had  said  to 
me:  'The  Man  on  whom  thou  shalt  see  the  Spirit 
descending  and  resting,  is  he  who  will  baptize  in  the 
Holy  Spirit.'  And  I  have  seen  it  and  bear  testimony 
that  this  man  is  the  Son  of  God." 

The  delegation  have  gone  home  with  their  report 
to  the  Sanhedrim.  Jesus  reappears  the  next  day, 
from  which  we  infer  that  his  home  in  the  desert  was 
not  far  off.  The  Baptist,  with  two  of  his  disciples, 
John  and  Andrew,  are  standing  together  as  Jesus 
approaches.  "  And  looking  at  Jesus  as  he  was  walk- 
ing, he  said  :  '  See  the  Lamb  of  God  ! '  And  the  two 
disciples  heard  what  he  said,  and  followed  Jesus. 
And  Jesus,  turning  about  and  seeing  them  following 
him,  said  :  '  What  do  you  desire  t  And  they  said  to 
him,  'Rabbi  (which  means  teacher),  where  do  you 
dwell  ? '  He  said  to  them,  '  Come  and  see.'  So  they 
went  and  saw  where  he  dwelt,  and  remained  with 
him  that  day.     It  was  about  the  tenth  hour!' 

What  marks  of  truth  and  nature  do  we  find  in  this 
description,  so  very  brief  and  elliptical  !  Any  ro- 
mancer, at  least  of  these  times,  would  have  employed 
pages  of  rhetoric  to  express  what  is  here  only  im- 
plied. The  personal  appearance  of  Jesus,  the  divine 
life  flowing  in  like  a  peaceful  river  after  temptation 
avercome,   making   the    sphere   about   him   radiant 


2S8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

therewith,  his  majesty  of  mien  in  the  newly  awakened 
consciousness  of  divine  power,  giving  grace  to  his 
motions  as  he  walked  along,  the  attractive  spiritual 
force  which  drew  the  two  disciples  irresistibly  after 
him,  so  that  they  followed  him  to  his  home  in  the 
desert,  —  all  this  we  are  left  to  infer ;  but  any  writer 
at  pains  to  exalt  the  subject  of  his  story,  would  have 
described  it  in  full.  How  the  words,  "  Lamb  of  God," 
with  the  imagery  which  they  evoked,  clung  ever  after 
\,o  the  mind  of  John,  we  have  already  seen,  and  it 
shows  how  beyond  any  power  of  description  was  his 
first  impression  of  Jesus. 

"  It  was  about  the  tenth  hour."  What  if  it  was  ? 
Why  record  a  fact  sixty  years  after  it  had  transpired, 
of  so  little  consequence  as  that  they  arrived  at  the 
dwelling-place  of  Jesus  at  four  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon }  Here  is  one  of  the  inevitable  touches  of 
nature.  Great  and  pregnant  moments  which  seem 
the  turning  points  of  destiny,  or  in  which  the  life  of 
years  seems  gathered  up,  we  fix  instinctively  as  a 
date  to  start  from,  and  such  was  the  meeting  of  John 
with  Jesus.  The  light  of  memory  thrown  back  over 
this  auspicious  hour,  was  so  concentrated  and  un- 
fading, that  the  smallest  things  stand  out  on  its  can- 
vas sixty  years  afterward,  and  especially  that  hour 
of  the  day  when  they  entered  the  dwelling-place  of 
Jesus. 

In  the  meeting  of  Jesus  at  this  time  with  three  of 
the  other  disciples  of  the  Baptist,  Peter,  Philip,  and 


THE  LAST  MEETING  BY  THE  JORDAN.      2S9 

Nathanael,  we  remark  that  mysterious  gift  which 
appears  frequently  afterwards ;  the  power  not  only 
of  discerning  character  but  of  reading  individual  his- 
tory and  turning  backward  its  pages,  even  the  secret 
record  of  mind  and  heart  which  the  subject  supposed 
locked  up  in  his  own  bosom.  Nathanael,  known 
afterwards  among  the  twelve  as  Bartholomew,  was 
now  a  disciple  of  John.  His  home  was  in  Cana  of 
Galilee  only  a  few  miles  from  Nazareth.  He  knew 
nothing  of  Jesus  ;  but  he  had  come  up  to  John's  bap- 
tism. He  had  his  place  of  retirement  and  secret 
prayer.  Such  places  were  furnished  by  the  hand  of 
nature  in  the  embowering  shades  on  the  lower  banks 
of  the  Jordan. 

"  The  fig-tree  —  not  that  kind  for  fruit  renowned, 
But  such  as  at  this  day  to  Indians  known 
In  Malabar  or  Decan —  spread  her  arms 
Branching  so  broad  and  long,  that  in  the  ground 
The  bended  twigs  take  root,  and  daughters  grow 
About  the  mother  tree,  a  pillared  shade 
High  over-arched,  and  echoing  walks  between." 

Philip  had  been  drawn  to  Jesus,  and  he  hastens  to 
find  Nathanael  and  tell  him.  We  have  found  the  prom- 
ised Messiah  in  Jesus  from  Nazareth.  Nathanael  lived 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Nazareth  and  knew  it  as  a 
poor  town  of  no  repute.  That  he  had  never  heard  of 
Jesus  shows  that  the  childhood  and  youth  of  the 
latter  had  been  retired  and  noiseless.  Very  naturally 
he  is  slow  to  believe  that  any  one  of  great  fame  is  to 
come  out  of  Nazareth.  In  the  interview  with  Jesus 
19 


290  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

it  is  evident  that  we  have  only  brief  hints  or  topics 
of  the  conversation.  Nathanael  finds  to  his  amaze- 
ment that  Jesus  already  discerns  him  and  reads  him 
through,  and  he  asks,  "  How  came  you  to  know  me  ?  " 
And  when  Jesus  replies,  "  I  saw  you  under  the  fig- 
tree,  I  knew  your  place  of  prayer,  and  the  thoughts 
and  aspirations  and  purposes  that  have  hallowed  it," 
recounting  to  him  we  know  not  how  much  of  his 
secret  history,  Nathanael  confesses  himself  convinced, 
and  exclaims,  "  Thou  art  indeed  the  Son  of  God  and 
the  expected  King  of  Israel."  Jesus  promises  evi- 
dence to  him  still  more  complete :  "  Hereafter  you 
will  have  prophetic  vision  of  my  mission  from  above, 
in  which,  as  to  John  at  my  baptism,  its  divine  agencies 
and  attestations  will  be  openly  revealed." 

Soon  after  this  Jesus  returns  to  Nazareth,  in  com- 
pany with  three  disciples.  We  infer  at  least  that 
John,  Philip,  and  Nathanael,  whose  minds  had  now 
been  freshly  opened  to  the  evidence  of  his  Messiah- 
ship,  went  with  him  to  Galilee.  John  keeps  himself 
out  of  sight  here  as  elsewhere,  but  he  writes  after- 
wards as  an  eye-witness.  That  Philip  went  is  plainly 
implied  ;  and  that  Nathanael  went  with  them  is  also 
implied,  his  home  being  in  Cana  only  nine  miles  from 
Nazareth. 

The  relation  of  the  Baptist  to  Jesus  and  the  nature 
of  the  mission  of  both,  are  shown  in  the  alacrity  with 
which  the  former  gave  up  his  disciples  to  the  latter. 
No   founder  of  a  sect,  no   theologian   ever  did   the 


THE  LAST  MEETING  BY  THE  JORDAN,      29 1 

same  before  or  since.  Unless  their  mission  had 
been  from  heaven  and  not  from  men,  we  should  have 
seen  some  tinge  of  earthly  ambition,  or  disappointed 
hope.  There  is  not  the  slightest,  but  a  burst  of  glad- 
ness as  the  Baptist  sees  his  light  flickering  and  going 
out  ill  the  glories  of  the  new  day. 


PART  III. 

THE   PRIVATE    MINISTRY   OF  JESUS. 

"  The  soft  evening  cloud,  and  behind  the  cloud  the  great  full  moon 
bodily  !  Something  so  contemplative,  so  sublime,  and  so  full  of  pres- 
age that  one  can  never  weary  of  it !  Every  time  I  read  John  it  seems 
as  if  I  could  see  him  before  me  at  the  Last  Supper,  leaning  on  his 
Master's  breast ;  as  if  his  angel  at  certain  passages  held  a  light  in  his 
hand,  embraced  me,  and  spake  something  in  my  ear.  There  is  much 
which  I  do  not  understand  as  I  read,  and  John's  meaning  floats  away 
before  me  in  the  distance  ;  but  even  then  when  I  look  into  a  place 
altogether  dark,  I  have  a  prescension  of  a  grand  royal  meaning  which 
some  day  will  be  revealed  to  me.  Therefore  I  grasp  eagerly  at  every 
new  exposition  of  the  Gospel  of  John.  Alas !  most  of  them  only 
ruffle  the  evening  clouds  and  the  moon  behind  them  is  left  in  peace." 

Claudius  of  Wandsbeck. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE   WEDDING   AT   CANA. 

WE  have  distinguished  between  the  private  and 
public  ministry  of  our  Saviour.  The  distinc- 
tion must  be  steadily  kept  in  view  if  we  would  un- 
derstand the  unity  of  the  four  Gospels  and  see  how 
John's  lies  within  the  other  three.  Jesus  returned 
from  the  Jordan  to  Nazareth  in  his  full  Messianic 
consciousness.  But  he  did  not  proclaim  this  pub- 
licly nor  organize  a  school  of  followers. 

His  first  private  ministry  was  an  exploration  of  the 
mind  and  heart  of  Judaism  to  see  if  it  had  any  place 
for  the  reception  of  the  new  faith.  It  is  a  most  in- 
teresting feature  in  the  philanthropy  of  Jesus  that 
its  universality,  the  absorption  of  his  love  for  the 
whole  race,  took  nothing  from  the  fervor  and  tender- 
ness of  his  private  friendships  or  his  love  of  his  own 
people  and  nation.  The  hereditary  proclivities  which 
made  him  susceptible  of  temptation  from  the  passions 
and  ambitions  of  the  Jewish  mind  would  at  the  same 
time  give  to  that  passion  which  we  call  patriotism  an 
intenser  glow.  How  intense  it  was  we  shall  see 
not  only  from  his  persistent  elfforts  to  save  his  own 
people  first  of  all,  but  the  depths  of  anguish  when  the 


296  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Jewish  mind  had  been  fully  explored  and  revealed 
and  the  final  disappointment  came.  In  this  respeo, 
John,  even  more  than  the  synoptics,  reveals  the  full 
humanity  of  Jesus  ;  humanity,  that  is,  in  the  entire 
range  of  its  affections. 

It  will  be  obvious  at  once  that  this  private  ministry, 
as  revealing  the  heart,  mind,  and  life  of  the  Saviour,  is 
quite  as  important  to  us  and  as  full  of  interest  as  his 
public  proclamations  of  his  mission.  It  will  be  obvi- 
ous too,  that  in  his  private  walk  and  intercourse  he 
would  not  be  seen  with  a  band  of  followers.  We 
should  rather  find  him  with  one  or  two  men,  the 
sharers  of  his  most  familiar  thoughts  and  tenderest 
personal  love.  That  this  was  the  case,  and  that  John 
was  the  companion  of  this  private  ministry,  there  is 
most  unquestionable  internal  evidence.  The  pre- 
sumption is  very  strong  of  the  truth  of  a  very  early 
tradition,  that  the  family  of  John  on  the  mother's  side 
had  kindred  relations  with  that  of  Jesus. 

It  will  be  seen  at  once  why  the  fourth  Gospel 
should  differ  so  much  from  the  first  and  second  both 
n  matter  and  style.  It  abounds  in  reports  of  collo- 
quial intercourse,  sometimes  of  intercourse  so  confi- 
dential and  sacred  that  the  report  of  it  could  not  have 
been  placed  on  public  record  without  manifest  indel- 
icacy and  impropriety  until  some  of  the  parties  had 
passed  away.  These  serve  as  delicate  finger-marks 
in  determining  the  date  of  the  fourth  Gospel. 

John,  therefore,  not  only  complements,  but  interlaces 


THE    WEDDING  AT  CAN  A.  29/ 

the  synoptics,  generally  with  a  clear  and  beautiful 
consistency.  He  never  in  a  single  instance  relates 
what  they  had  reported  except  to  show  its  essential 
connection  with  something  which  they  had  omitted. 
A  special  as  well  as  general  purpose  is  evinced  in 
the  narrative  from  beginning  to  end.  It  must  have 
been  written  by  one  familiar  already  with  the  synop- 
tics, and  by  an  eye-witness  of  what  he  relates,  for  no 
one  else  could  have  so  dovetailed  the  narrative  as  to 
make  it  fit  into  theirs  so  delicately  and  with  such 
marks  of  reality. 

Jesus  returns  to  Galilee  with  three  disciples,  and 
now  his  private  ministry  begins.  There  was  a  wed- 
ding in  Cana,  nine  miles  from  Nazareth,  and  the 
mother  of  Jesus  was  there.  She  would  not  probably 
have  been  there  unless  she  had  kindred  relations  with 
the  bridegroom  or  the  bride.  That  the  bridegroom 
was  John  himself  cannot  be  affirmed  with  absolute 
certainty  ;  but  if  any  one  will  take  pains  to  group 
all  the  facts  which  bear  upon  the  subject  he  will 
hardly  escape  the  conviction  that  this  was  so ;  that 
Salome,  the  mother  of  John,  was  a  kinswoman  of  Mary, 
and  that  the  early  tradition  is  right  which  makes 
John  the  bridegroom  of  this  marriage  feast. 

Immediately  after  the  wedding  Jesus  with  his 
mother  and  brethren  went  to  Capernaum  on  a  visit 
of  a  few  days,  at  or  near  which  place  the  family  of 
Zebedee  lived  and  where  John  subsequently  resided. 
Recall  the  scene  at  the  cross  where  Mary  and  Sa- 


298  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

lome  were  both  present,  and  from  which  time  John 
took  Mary  to  his  own  home  ;  recall,  too,  the  special 
intimacy  which  ever  subsisted  between  Jesus  and 
Salome  and  her  two  sons,  and  the  family  connection 
becomes  still  more  probable.  And  if  John  was  the 
bridegroom  at  the  wedding  he  describes,  the  manner 
in  which  he  has  kept  himself  in  the  shade  is  highly 
characteristic  of  his  whole  style  and  method. 

Jesus  and  his  disciples  were  invited  to  the  festival ; 
that  is  to  say,  Philip  and  Nathanael  who  came  with 
him  from  the  Jordan,  the  latter  of  whom  was  already 
at  his  home  in  Cana.  John  is  at  pains  to  tell  us  that 
here  was  the  first  miracle  which  Jesus  wrought 
The  whole  scene  is  of  vast  significance.  What  Jesus 
would  do  when  the  complete  Messianic  power  had 
come  into  his  consciousness  to  be  ultimated  in  his 
works,  would  give  shape  and  color  to  the  new  re- 
ligion now  descending  upon  the  world.  He  comes 
from  the  desert,  from  long  fastings  and  solitudes, 
from  the  baptism  cf  John  the  hermit,  bringing  three 
of  the  hermit's  disciples  with  him,  and  in  the  natural 
course  of  human  development  his  religion  would 
have  taken  a  tinge  of  moroseness  and  gloom.  But 
its  first  office  was  to  fling  light  and  gayety  over  the 
common  paths  of  life  and  a  charm  and  consecration 
over  its  most  delightful  joys.  The  "  beginning  of 
miracles  "  was  an  entire  breaking  away  from  the 
asceticism  of  John  ;  and  Christianity  at  her  very  in- 
auguration has  no  leathern  girdle,  nor  raiment  of 


THE    WEDDING  AT C ANA. 


299 


camel's  hair,  nor  food  of  locusts,  but  comes  gar- 
landed with  festal  flowers  and  with  cups  of  innocent 
pleasure  in  her  hands.  The  miracle  which  changed 
the  water  into  wine  was  not  more  wonderful  as  the 
exercise  of  new-given  power  than  for  its  beautiful 
significance. 

The  details  of  the  narrative  are  such  as  no  fab- 
ricator would  be  likely  to  invent.  The  ideals  of  the 
next  age  began  to  have  a  coloring  of  asceticism,  and 
would  not  probably  have  made  Jesus  the  chief  figure 
and  purveyor  at  a  marriage  scene,  and  such  a  mar- 
riage scene  as  was  made  conformable  to  the  ideas 
and  customs  of  Palestine.  We  have  nothing  like  it 
in  the  marriage  customs  of  our  freezing  occidental- 
ism. It  was  a  prolonged  festival  of  eight  days  with 
gay  processions  and  rejoicings.  Marriage  was  held 
by  the  Hebrews  in  supreme  honor.  The  espousals 
were  made  early,  generally  in  childhood,  that  the 
mind  and  imagination  might  be  kept  pure  and  loyal, 
and  the  marriage  scene  was  the  consummation  of 
the  fond  hopes  and  aspirations  of  years.  The  bride 
in  her  chamber  was  decked  by  her  maids  and  veiled, 
like  Rebecca,  amid  festal  songs.  When  the  hour  of 
marriage  arrived,  a  procession  came  with  the  bride- 
groom, usually  in  the  night  and  by  torchlight,  and 
under  a  canopy  supported  by  four  attendants,  the 
bride's  party  exclaiming  as  they  approach,  "  Blessed 
is  he  who  cometh  ! "  The  marriage  was  consum- 
mated amid  the  pouring  and  drinking  of  wine      If 


300  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  home  of  the  bridegroom  was  near,  the  proces- 
sion returned  to  his  house  with  the  bride  and  her 
maidens,  the  latter  conveying  nuptial  lamps  while 
their  rich  attire  reflected  the  dazzling  lustre.  They 
walked  under  a  silken  canopy,  hence  the  figure, 
"  Thy  banner  over  us  is  love."  Arrived  at  the  bride- 
groom's house,  the  festivities  were  continued  with 
dance  and  song.  Amid  a  festal  scene  like  this  Jesus 
appears  in  the  first  miracle  which  signalized  his 
divine  mission  to  mankind.  There  was  no  return 
procession,  however,  in  this  case,  if  our  conjecture 
is  right,  the  home  of  the  bridegroom  being,  not  in 
Cana,  but  in  Capernaum,  whither  his  friends  attended 
him  with  his  bride,  as  indicated  in  the  sentence  fol- 
lowing, "  After  this,  Jesus  and  his  mother  and  his 
kinsmen,  his  disciples  (guests  at  the  wedding),  went 
down  to  Capernaum,  but  continued  there  not  many 
days." 

The  spontaneous  touches  of  truth  and  nature  con- 
tained in  the  narrative  are  inimitable.  How  much  is 
unconsciously  implied  in  the  conversation  of  Jesus 
with  his  mother !  Mary  must  have  long  seen  and  felt 
the  growing  and  overshadowing  power  of  Jesus,  and 
now  more  than  ever  on  his  return  from  the  Jordan 
after  the  new  immersion  into  the  depths  of  the  Divine 
Love  from  which  he  comes  beaming  forth.  Mary  is 
no  such  person  as  the  Catholic  Church  would  make 
her.  She  has  a  mother's  fondness,  with  all  its  foolish 
pride.     She  importunes  Jesus  to  make  a  display  of 


THE    WEDDING  AT  CANA.  30I 

his  astonishing  power.  The  wine  failed,  and  she  said 
to  him,  **  They  have  no  wine."  She  said  a  good  deal 
more,  as  the  reply  indicates.  The  reply  is  not  harsh 
and  cold,  as  our  common  rendering  would  make  it, 
though  it  contains  a  mild  rebuke.  The  rebuke  is  not 
in  the  address,  "  Woman,"  which  was  one  of  honor 
and  reverence,  but  in  what  follows,  and  whose  sense 
is,  "  Do  not  be  troublesome  ;  the  time  has  not  come 
for  me  to  make  a  public  proclamation  of  myself" 
She  would  have  had  him  make  such  a  blazon  of  his 
miraculous  power  as  to  fill  the  guests  with  admira- 
tion, and  he  refuses.  The  way  in  which  its  benefi- 
cent exercise  is  veiled  and  the  miracle  wrought, 
through  private  directions  to  the  servants,  is  in 
keeping  with  the  whole  bearing  of  Jesus  during  his 
private  ministry.  Any  forger  would  have  shown  it 
paraded  foremost,  and  not  held  in  reserve.  The  way, 
too,  in  which  Mary  is  introduced  upon  the  scene,  and 
a  delicate  veil  thrown  over  her  weakness,  so  as  to 
hide  it  as  much  as  possible,  has  the  spirit  of  John  in 
every  Une  and  word,  and  his  tender  regard  for  the 
adopted  mother  of  his  household.  Mariolatry  began 
very  early,  but  we  have  no  trace  of  it  in  her  own 
family,  and  the  record  herein  has  one  of  the  plainest 
marks  of  genuineness. 

The  rationale  of  what  we  call  miracles  will  elude 
our  philosophies,  but  no  more  than  the  whole  power 
of  spirit  over  mind  and  matter,  or  of  the  will  over  the 
body,  which  we  exercise  every  day  and  hour.    The 


302  THE  FOURTH  GOSPAL. 

theory,  from  the  stand-point  of  supernaturalism,  as- 
sumes that,  from  this  time  forth,  Jesus  was  in  open 
communication  with  both  the  spirit  world  and  natu- 
ral, and  in  larger  and  more  vital  communication  with 
them  both  than  any  other  person  before  or  since  ;  in 
more  ample  endowment  of  that  Creative  Word,  out 
of  which  all  things  were  evolved,  and  of  which  nature 
itself  is  only  the  leaf  and  flower.  That  being  so,  the 
control  of  his  will  not  only  over  his  own  bodily  mo- 
tions, but  over  natural  processes  beyond  his  imme- 
diate personaUty,  is  not  to  be  reckoned  as  belonging 
to  magic  or  prodigy  any  more  than  ours  is  when  it 
controls  the  muscles  of  our  frames.  One  is  as  mys- 
terious as  the  other,  and  the  "  Word  made  flesh  " 
being  once  assumed,  one  is  as  credible  as  the  other, 
since  both  are  through  the  influx  from  the  higher 
planes  of  being  into  the  lower  ones,  the  former,  how- 
ever, under  conditions  more  enlarged  and  compre- 
hending. This  "  beginning  of  miracles  "  attests  the 
newly  opened  divine  consciousness  in  Jesus,  and  the 
proof  thereof  is  to  be  found  afterward,  when  in  him 
and  through  him  the  heavens  are  nearing  the  earth, 
and  the  spirit-world  is  pressing  into  the  natural  to  make 
the  latter  more  entirely  its  healthful  and  beneficent 
body  and  robe.^ 

1  The  six  water-jars  mentioned  in  this  narrative  were  vessels  kept 
in  a  back  room  for  the  washing  of  hands  before  meals.  The  urgent 
importance  of  this  will  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  the  Jews  in  those 
days  used  at  their  meals  neither  spoons  nor  knives  and  forks,  but  only 
their  hands  and  fingers.    Dr.  Clark  writes :  "  It  is  worthy  of  note  that 


THE    WEDDING  AT  CAN  A,  303 

walking  among  the  ruins  of  Cana,  we  saw  large  mossy  stone  water- 
pots,  answering  the  description  given  of  the  ancient  vessels  of  that  coun- 
try ;  not  preserved  nor  exhibited  as  relics,  but  lying  about  disregarded 
by  the  present  inhabitants  as  antiquities  with  whose  original  use  they 
were  unacquainted.  From  their  appearance  and  the  number  of  them 
it  was  quite  evident  that  a  practice  of  keeping  water  in  large  stone 
pots,  each  holding  from  eighteen  to  twenty-seven  gallons  was  once 
common  in  the  country."  Travels,  vol.  iii.  part  ii.  ch.  14.  It  will  be 
seen  how  the  miracle  at  Cana  was  performed  in  a  retired  part  of  the 
house  where  only  the  servants  could  be  witnesses  of  it,  and  where 
display  could  be  carefully  avoided. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE    FIRST   VISIT   AT  JERUSALEM. 

NOT  a  great  while  after  the  wedding  at  Cana, 
occurred  the  annual  Passover  festival  at  Jeru- 
salem.  It  appealed  with  stirring  associations  to 
every  Hebrew  family,  for  it  was  the  day  of  national 
deliverance  from  Egyptian  bondage.  It  occurred  in 
the  new  moon  of  the  month  Nisan-,  answering  in  part 
to  our  month  of  March.  Great  care  was  taken  by 
the  Sanhedrim  at  Jerusalem  to  proclaim  the  exact 
moment  of  its  commencement  through  all  the  tribes 
of  Israel.  They  watched  for  the  first  beam  of  the 
silver  crescent  in  the  sky,  and  the  moment  it  ap- 
peared a  man  went  to  the  top  of  Mount  Olivet,  kin- 
dled a  torch,  and  waved  it  aloft,  backward  and  for- 
ward through  the  air.  It  was  answered  forthwith  by 
torch-lights  from  the  immediately  surrounding  hills. 
These  again  were  answered  from  the  hills  farther 
outward,  and  so  the  wave  of  fire  enlarged  and  ex- 
tended on  and  on  till  every  Hebrew  family  had 
greeted  the  summons.  It  went  south  towards  Egypt 
till  it  touched  the  desert ;  westward,  till  the  range  of 
Carmel  flung  it  to  the  sea ;  northward,  till  it  blazed 
from  Libanus  and  AntiHbanus  ;  eastward,  even  into 


THE  FIRST  VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.  305 

Babylonia,  till  it  gleamed  on  the  waters  of  the  Eu- 
phrates. Subsequently,  after  hostile  Samaria  had 
broken  the  wave  by  false  signals,  or  perhaps  by  re- 
fusing to  give  any  at  all,  the  torch-lights  were  su- 
perseded by  swift  messengers,  who  went  forth  to 
proclaim  the  festival. 

Every  Hebrew  male,  circumcised,  of  adult  age  and 
able-bodied,  was  bound  to  go  up  to  Jerusalem  at  the 
Passover  festival,  either  in  person  or  by  some  repre- 
sentative of  the  family  to  which  he  belonged,  and 
offer  sacrifice.  Women  and  children  were  not  re- 
quired to  go,  though  they  often  did  ;  and  so  the  ways 
converging  to  the  capital  were  thronged  with  people, 
generally  travelling  in  groups,  and  chanting  select 
psalms  of  David.  They  crowded  into  the  capital  by 
the  hundred  thousand,  and  it  was  one  of  the  beautiful 
features  of  the  occasion  that  private  houses  now  be- 
came public,  and  sacred  to  its  hospitalities.  Not 
every  individual  of  this  great  multitude  was  required 
to  offer  sacrifice  in  the  temple.  They  organized  in 
groups  or  companies,  each  company  offering  its  lamb 
or  its  bullock,  for  which  purpose  they  were  admitted 
into  the  court  of  the  priests,  three  companies  at  a 
time.  Vast  numbers  of  animals  were  required  for 
sacrifice,  and  the  festival  was  the  grand  market  time 
for  the  shepherds  and  graziers  of  Judaea.  They  had 
their  pens  and  stalls  about  the  temple,  and  those 
more  eager  and  unscrupulous  pushed  them  into  its 
sacred   precinct,  and  invaded  its  outer  court.     The 


306  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

court  of  the  Gentiles  covered  about  fourteen  acres  of 
ground,  and  it  now  became  thronged  with  great 
crowds,  speaking  in  various  provinciaUsms,  with  the 
obscene  spectacle  of  bleating  sheep  and  lowing  herds  ; 
the  herdsmen  at  the  stalls  chaffering  for  the  best  bar- 
gain ;  Jewish  avarice  making  the  most  out  of  Jewish 
piety.     A  very  lively  and  promiscuous  scene  ! 

We  must  suppose  that  Jesus  had  often  attended 
these  festivals,  but  John  describes  his  presence  at  the 
first  after  his  Messianic  consciousness  had  changed 
from  twilight  into  noonday.  That  John  was  with  him 
seems  certain.  That  Nathanael  and  Philip  were  also 
with  him  seems  probable.  His  first  act  on  entering 
the  temple  was  to  purge  it  of  the  unclean  nuisances, 
— the  sheep-pens,  the  cattle  stalls,  and  the  traffickers. 
The  wonder  is  not  that  they  were  driven  out  in  con- 
fusion and  dismay,  but  that  they  had  ever  been  per- 
mitted to  come  in,  and  that  the  police  regulations 
had  become  so  lax  and  sleepy  under  a  decay  of  rev- 
erence for  sacred  places  and  the  ideas  which  they 
represent.  To  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  scene  we 
must  remember  that  the  men  knew  they  had  no  busi- 
ness there,  that  the  crowds  knew  it  and  were  glad  to 
have  them  driven  out,  but  had  not  sufficient  command 
to  effect  it.  Jesus  assumed  the  command  in  that 
conscious  power  of  control  over  men  which  had  now 
become  clearly  his.  To  understand  how  intolerable 
was  the  nuisance,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
temple  in  all  its  courts  had  a  representative  signifi- 


THE  FIRST  VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.  307 

cancc.  It  was  regarded  as  copied  from  the  courts 
of  heaven,  and  so  again  represented  humanity  itself 
regenerated  and  made  the  shekinah  of  the  living 
God.  Hence,  when  the  spectators  asked  him  why 
he  assumed  this  lordship  over  the  temple,  he  made 
immediate  reference  to  the  temple  of  his  body  about 
to  be  glorified  as  the  fullness  of  the  indwelling  God- 
head, —  a  reference  which,  of  course,  they  could  not 
understand. 

Skeptical  writers  stumble  at  the  fact  that  a  similar 
transaction  is  related  by  the  synoptics,  but  by  them 
as  occurring  at  the  last  Passover  of  his  ministry 
instead  of  the  first ;  that  is  to  say,  two  years  later. 
There  is  no  discrepancy.  Almost  inevitably  the  nui- 
sance would  be  repeated  at  subsequent  Passovers  in 
the  absence  of  police  regulations  to  prevent  it,  and  if 
repeated  it  would  be  likely  again  to  be  abated  under 
the  same  authority,  with  severer  denunciations  against 
the  traffickers  as  a  pack  of  thieves  driving  their  busi- 
ness in  a  house  of  prayer. 

Many  believed  on  Jesus  at  this  festival  from  "  see- 
ing his  miracles."  The  evangelist  does  not  specify 
them,  and  the  inference  is  that  they  were  now  his 
Tamiliar  and  spontaneous  actions  in  his  walk  amongst 
■nen,  and  especially  amongst  the  sick,  who  became 
veil  in  the  radiant  sphere  of  his  life  and  under  his 
itealing  hand.  His  ministry  was  altogether  personal 
md  conversational,  and  the  most  important  and  sig- 
iiificant  incident  related  was,  — 


508  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

THE    INTERVIEW   WITH   NICODEMUS. 

John  reports  the  conversation  as  if  he  were  pres- 
ent and  heard  it.  The  first  remarkable  fact  con- 
nected with  it  is  one  which  we  shall  find  evermore 
repeated  and  which  characterized  our  Saviour's  in- 
tercourse with  men.  Nicodemus  begins  with  a 
remark  which  he  intends  shall  be  introductory  to 
further  inquiries.  Jesus  does  not  reply  to  anything 
he  had  said  or  was  going  to  say,  but  directly  to  his 
inmost  thought  and  state  of  mind.  He  searches 
him  with  a  glance  and  knows  that  his  whole  concep- 
tion concerning  the  Kingdon  of  God  now  approach- 
ing, is  sensuous  and  worldly,  and  no  more  corre- 
sponds to  the  truth  of  things  than  that  of  the  babe 
before  birth  corresponds  to  the  world  of  light  and 
colors.  A  new  range  of  senses  must  be  touched  and 
opened  ;  he  must  be  born  into  a  new  world  before 
he  can  know  what  the  Kingdom  of  God  is.  Jesus 
wastes  no  words  in  exhibiting  his  credentials  or 
appealing  to  his  miracles  to  authenticate  his  claims, 
which  were  sure  to  be  misunderstood.  He  describes 
the  change  from  a  natural  to  a  spiritual  state  of  mind 
as  a  first  essential  condition.  Nicodemus  sits  be- 
wildered and  suffers  the  heavenly  discourse  to  flow 
on.  We  shall  fail  to  enter  fully  into  its  import  un- 
less we  construe  it  in  the  light  of  the  scene  a  few 
weeks  before  on  the  banks  of  the  Jordan.  When 
Jesus  avers  that  he  speaks  what  he  knows  and  testi* 


THE  FIRST  VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.  309 

fies  to  what  he  has  seen,  he  means  plainly  that  he 
holds  the  truth  which  he  teaches  not  as  opinions, 
and  reasonings  about  them,  but  as  seen  in  the  higher 
range  of  existence  out  of  time  and  mortahty  and 
above  their  sphere.  "  If  I  tell  you  of  those  heavenly 
things  you  will  not  believe  them,  for  you  do  not  un- 
derstand  the  earthly  things  that  represent  and  image 
them  forth.  You  stick  in  the  letter  and  you  cannot 
rise  out  of  it.  And  no  man  hath  ascended  up  to 
heaven  but  him  that  came  down  from  heaven,  even 
the  son  of  man  who  is  in  heaven."  Let  us  not  sink 
the  strain  of  this  high  utterance  to  a  lower  key,  for 
only  by  rising  to  its  level  we  get  an  adequate  idea  of 
that  state  of  mind  out  of  which  Jesus  spake,  taught, 
and  acted  from  the  first  opening  of  his  ministry  ; 
which  made  him  speak,  not  from  tradition,  but  from 
original  and  inexhaustible  fountains,  when  he  sur- 
prised his  hearers  by  his  commanding  tone,  or  smote 
his  enemies  as  by  electric  power.  In  the  language 
quoted,  he  is  not  claiming  a  separate,  personal  pre- 
existence  and  personal  descent  from  heaven,  —  con- 
ceptions we  think  entirely  foreign  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment, nor  yet  is  he  using  an  extravagant  oriental  style 
which  we  must  freeze  down  into  mere  rhetoric  to  find 
the  meaning  of  By  "  ascending  up  to  heaven  "  he 
means,  as  the  scene  at  the  Jordan  shows,  the  opening 
of  his  mind  through  all  its  ascending  degrees  even 
up  to  the  central  Light  and  Life  of  all,  so  that  the 
heavenly  worlds  as  they  exist  beyond  sense  and  mor- 


3IO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

tality  lay  on  his  perceptions  more  unerringly  than 
this  world  of  matter  lies  obvious  to  the  senses  of 
men.  By  "  coming  down  out  of  heaven,"  he  means 
passing  from  these  high  frames  into  conditions  which 
were  earthly  and  mortal,  that  those  immortal  realities 
might  have  clothings  and  representations  on  the 
plane  of  sense  and  matter.  By  dwelling  iit  heaveuy 
he  means  that  these  high  states  were  normal  and  not 
exceptional,  so  that  while  he  had  intercourse  with 
men  through  these  bodily  organs,  in  his  inmost  being 
he  had  open  cognizance  of  the  heavenly  orders  of 
existence,  and  lived  amid  their  eternal  serenities. 
To  fail  of  following  Jesus  in  thought  to  these  celestial 
heights,  is  to  fail  of  understanding  both  his  character 
and  message.  But  hearing  and  seeing  him  as  thus 
**  coming  down  from  heaven,"  we  shall  appreciate  in 
some  measure  his  tone  of  authority  ;  shall  see  why 
he  never  reasons  out  the  truths  of  his  religion  but 
simply  reveals  them  ;  why  he  says  nothing  about 
"  the  evidences  "  of  immortality,  since  he  lived  amid 
its  scenery  and  had  only  to  announce  it ;  why  he 
often  speaks  of  future  events  as  if  already  transpir- 
ing, including  his  own  death  and  resurrection,  and 
the  passing  away  of  the  Jewish  Church  and  nation, 
since  he  lived  in  the  realm  of  causes  whence  he  saw 
into  the  heart  of  things  and  the  germs  of  all  history. 


THE  FIRST  VISIT  A  T  JERUSALEM.  3 1 1 

JESUS    RETIRES    FROM   JUDAEA. 

lie  saw  the  state  of  the  Jewish  mind,  and  that 
here  there  could  be  no  general  reception  of  his  mes- 
sage, but  that  it  would  provoke  open  and  intense  op- 
position and  hate.  Many  believed  in  him  seeing  his 
miracles.  "  But  he  did  not  trust  himself  to  them  for 
he  knew  them  all,  and  had  no  need  that  any  one 
should  tell  him  what  men  are,  for  he  knew  what  was 
in  man."  ^  He  withdrew,  at  first,  into  the  country  of 
Judaea,  away  from  the  glare  and  notoriety  of  the  city, 
and  many  resorted  to  him,  were  taught  by  him  and 
were  baptized  by  his  disciples.  This  excited  the  jeal- 
ousy of  John's  disciples.  The  Baptist  had  come  over 
from  Bethany,  beyond  Jordan,  and  was  preaching 
and  baptizing  near  Salem  on  the  border  of  the  des- 
ert. By  the  laws  of  mere  human  growth  and  de- 
velopment, the  schools  of  Jesus  and  of  the  Baptist 
should  now  have  become  rival  sects,  with  the  usual 
envyings  and  recriminations  of  ecclesiastical  strife. 
That  they  did  not,  affords  a  strong  confirmation  of 
the  averment  of  the  Baptist,  that  he  had  seen  Jesus 
from  a  higher  than  a  mere  earthly  point  of  view.  His 
answer  to  his  own  jealous  disciples  who  came  to  him 
with  manifest  alarm,  is  one  of  the  sublime  passages 
of  history,  —  "  Lo,  Jesus  is  baptizing,  and  all  men  are 
going  to  him,"  say  they.  The  answer  of  John  is 
found  in  chapter  third,  from  verse  27  to  the  end  of  the 

1  Chapter  iii.  23-25. 


312  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

chapter.  Expositors  have  been  in  doubt  where  the 
words  of  the  Baptist  end  and  where  those  of  the 
EvangeUst  are  resumed.  We  understand  this  whole 
passage  to  be  the  utterance  of  the  Baptist,  showing 
the  heighth  and  breadth  and  clearness  of  his  illumi- 
nation. That  alone  accounts  to  us  for  the  grace  and 
even  exultation,  with  which  a  man  of  his  wonderful 
power,  with  converts  flocking  to  him  from  every  side, 
was  content  to  see  himself  superseded  in  the  break- 
ing glories  of  a  new  day. 

Jesus  was  making  disciples  now  more  rapidly  than 
the  Baptist.  The  authorities  knew  it,  and  Jesus  was 
aware  that  the  eye  of  the  Sanhedrim  was  bent  keenly 
upon  him.  He  knew  that  his  own  doctrine  was  to 
be  tenfold  more  revolutionary  than  that  of  the  Bap- 
tist, and  that  his  immediate  arrest  would  follow  if 
he  remained  in  Judaea.  He  returned  to  Nazareth  by 
the  shortest  route,  which  was  through  the  heart  of 
Samaria.  The  "  disciples  "  who  were  now  with  him, 
were  probably  the  same  men  who  followed  him  from 
the  Jordan,  and  who  went  up  with  him  to  the  Pass- 
over festival, — John,  Nathanael,  and  Philip.  It  was 
a  quiet  and  private  journey  on  foot,  made  for  the  pur- 
pose of  avoiding  publicity  or  getting  away  from  it 
It  was  with  two  or  three  intimate  personal  friends. 


THE  FIRST  VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.  313 

CONVERSATION    AT    THE    WELL. 

They  passed  through  Sychar,  the  ancient  She- 
chem  of  the  tribe  of  Ephraim,  lying  between  Mount 
Gerizim  on  the  left  and  Mount  Ebal  on  the  right, 
both  of  them  clothed  to  the  Hebrew  mind  with  the 
most  sublime  historic  memories  ;  facing  each  other 
with  a  sort  of  grim  horror  which  contrasts  with  the 
rich  valley  between,  where  the  city  Hes  embedded  in 
green  gardens  and  olive-grounds,  rendered  more  ver- 
dant by  the  lengthened  shade  which  they  enjoy  from 
the  mountains.  The  city  is  in  the  heart  of  Samaria, 
being  forty  miles  from  Jerusalem,  and  as  many  more 
from  Nazareth.  This  journey  of  eighty  miles,  trav- 
elled on  foot  by  Jesus  and  two  or  three  intimate 
friends,  holding  converse  by  the  way  with  persons 
whom  they  met  or  with  whom  they  tarried,  gives  us 
a  very  distinct  and  vivid  idea  of  the  private  ministry 
of  our  Saviour.  Jacob's  well  was  near  the  city,  just 
outside  its  walls  as  you  approach  from  Jerusalem. 
It  is  there  yet,  near  the  point  where  the  narrow 
valley  of  Shechem,  which  is  the  modern  Neapolis, 
opens  into  the  wider  field.  It  is  a  permanent  land- 
mark, being  an  excavation  thirty-five  feet  deep  out 
of  the  solid  rock.  The  wells  were  places  of  public 
resort,  and  this  one  was  peculiarly  so,  being  near 
the  city  walls  and  on  one  of  the  thoroughfares,  where 
women  morning  and  evening  would  be  seen  coming 
from  the  city  gates,  waiting  their  turn  and  filing  away 
with  their  pitchers  on  their  heads. 


3^4 


THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 


We  know  of  no  composition  pervaded  more  thickly 
with  threads  of  historic  reality  than  the  fourth  chap- 
ter of  John.  The  air,  the  scenery,  the  manners,  and 
prejudices  of  the  people,  are  before  us  in  the  spon- 
taneous allusions  of  the  narrative.  Every  word  is 
fragrant  with  them  and  with  the  spirit  of  history  run- 
ning back  more  than  a  thousand  years.  All  that  can 
be  gathered  from  Josephus  is  only  a  verification 
of  this  chapter.  "  The  journey  of  our  Lord  from 
Judaea  to  Galilee  "  says  a  traveller  writing  from  the 
spot,  "  the  cause  of  it,  his  passage  through  the  terri- 
tory of  Samaria,  his  approach  to  the  metropolis  of 
this  country,  its  name,  his  arrival  at  the  Amorite 
field  which  terminates  the  narrow  valley  of  Shechem, 
the  ancient  custom  of  halting  at  a  well,  the  female 
employment  of  drawing  water,  the  disciples  sent  into 
the  city  for  food,  by  which  its  situation  out  of  the 
town  is  obviously  implied,  the  question  of  the  woman 
referring  to  existing  prejudices,  which  separated  the 
Jews  from  the  Samaritans ;  the  depth  of  the  well, 
the  Oriental  allusion  contained  in  the  expression  *  liv- 
ing water,'  the  history  of  the  well  and  the  customs 
thereby  illustrated ;  the  worship  upon  Mount  Geri- 
zim, — all  these  occur  within  the  space  of  twenty 
verses."  ^  The  incidental  and  cumulative  evidence 
becomes  well-nigh  irresistible  that  the  writer  of  the 
fourth  Gospel  is  an  eye-witness  of  what  he  records, 
as  none  else  would  catch  with  such  precision  and 
spontaneity  the  minute  features  of  his  pictures. 

1  Dr.  Clarke's  Travels,  p.  517.     Robinson's  Calmet,  p.  845. 


THE  FIRST  VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.  315 

"  It  was  about  noon,"  an  attention  to  precision  of 
date  purely  incidental,  and  a  further  indication  of  his- 
toric reality.  More  than  all,  the  conversation  with 
the  woman  is  in  striking  accord  with  what  the  writer 
had  previously  told  us  concerning  the  methods  of 
Jesus,  and  his  power  over  the  minds  of  others.  The 
woman  understands  not  a  word  of  the  discourse  about 
"  living  water,"  sinking  the  spirit  in  the  letter  all  the 
while  ;  but  when  she  finds  not  only  her  own  mind  and 
soul  laid  bare  under  a  perfect  diagnosis  of  her  spirit- 
ual condition,  but  the  pages  of  her  memory  read  back- 
ward through  all  her  personal  history,  she  springs  to 
the  conclusion  that  not  only  a  prophet  but  the  very 
Messiah  has  come.  It  seems  probable  that  John  has 
only  given  us  here  the  heads  of  conversation,  and  that 
when  the  woman  said  he  told  her  all  she  ever  did,  it 
was  not  such  sheer  exaggeration  as  might  at  first 
appear.  She  runs  back  to  the  city,  forgetting  her 
pitcher  and  leaving  it,  and  brings  out  her  acquaint- 
ances to  see  the  wonderful  man.  He  converses  with 
them  in  turn,  enters  the  city  along  with  them,  and 
remains  there  two  days  engaged  in  personal  inter- 
course with  these  people,  many  of  whom  believed 
"  through  his  own  teaching."  No  ''  miracle  "  is  re- 
corded of  him  here,  nor  are  we  led  to  suppose  that 
these  Samaritans  were  initiated  very  far  into  a  knowl- 
c»dge  of  the  mysteries  of  the  new  kingdom  of  God. 
But  the  power  of  Jesus  in  sounding  the  depths  of 
the  human  consciousness,  and  reproducing  the  past 


3l6  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

on  the  living  canvas  of  the  soul,  and  thence  speaking 
to  its  condition,  is  here  brought  freshly  into  view  as 
it  characterizes  his  method  through  all  his  subsequent 
ministry.  It  was  a  power  higher  in  degree  than  that 
over  outward  nature  or  over  the  physical  body,  for  it 
involved  such  a  knowledge  of  the  hidden  past  and 
present,  that  the  future  about  to  be  evolved  therefrom 
lay  before  him  already  as  in  sunlight. 

THE  SECOND  MIRACLE  IN  CANA. 

Jesus  returned  to  his  home  in  Nazareth.  Before 
his  arrival,  reports  of  what  he  did  at  Jerusalem  had 
preceded  him.  Of  course  a  great  many  persons  from 
Nazareth  and  its  vicinity  were  at  the  Passover  festi- 
val, witnessing,  not  without  some  complacent  pride, 
the  wonder  and  admiration  produced  there,  by  one 
from  their  own  humble  and  despised  town.  They 
welcome  him  home.  He  remains  at  Nazareth  now 
nearly  two  months,  or  until  the  next  Jewish  festival, 
evidently  in  the  exercise  of  the  offices  of  his  private 
ministry.  He  revisits  Cana,  where  his  miracle  at  the 
wedding-feast  had  become  known  and  had  placed  the 
minds  of  the  people  in  receptive  attitude  towards 
him.  Herod  Antipas  was  now  tetrarch  of  Galilee, 
with  his  residence  at  Tiberias,  on  the  shore  of  the 
lake,  a  few  miles  south  of  Capernaum.  An  officer  of 
his  court  was  at  Cana,  who  had  a  son  sick  at  Caper- 
naum. He  had  heard  of  the  mysterious  power  of 
Jesus,  and  besought  him  to  go  down  to  Capernaum 


THE  FIRST  VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.  317 

and  heal  his  son  who  was  dying.  "  Go,"  said  Jesus, 
"your  son  is  well."  Capernaum  was  fifteen  miles 
from  Cana.  This  case  in  some  of  its  features  resem- 
bles so  much  that  of  the  servant  of  the  centurion  nar- 
rated by  Matthew  that  skeptical  writers  assume  that 
Matthew  and  John  give  contradictory  accounts  of  the 
same  transaction.  It  is  sheer  assumption.  They 
both  belong  to  a  class  of  miracles  distinct  from  those 
of  ordinary  healing  by  the  touch  of  the  hand,  but  no 
more  difficult  to  account  for  under  the  action  of  spir- 
itual laws.  In  all  these  instances  of  the  restoration 
of  vital  power,  it  is  the  mind  of  Jesus  flowing  into  the 
mind  of  the  suiferer,  and  thence  throbbing  by  a  new 
influx  of  life  through  the  whole  physical  frame.  The 
only  essential  condition  was  that  Jesus  should  be 
brought  into  such  relation  to  the  suflerer,  that  the  lat- 
ter could  be  ensphered  within  that  restoring  love  and 
mercy.  Personal  presence,  or  physical  contact  with 
words  surcharged  with  electric  sympathy,  we  know 
from  common  experience  are  sometimes  worth  more 
to  the  patient  than  any  medicine  in  the  world  to 
make  the  languid  or  freezing  currents  of  life  to  start 
anew.  There  was  no  other  magic  in  the  hem  of 
Jesus*  garment  or  the  touch  of  his  hand,  than  the 
magic  of  this  creative  and  healing  sympathy.  But 
who  of  us  shall  say  that  there  is  no  access  of  mind  to 
mind  and  of  soul  to  soul  except  through  these  fleshly, 
clumsy  instrumentalities.?  Who  shall  say  this,  es- 
pecially of  one  who  "  dwelt  in  heaven  "  while  yet  in 


3l8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  flesh,  and  thence  came  down  with  the  divine 
restoratives  among  the  woes  and  agonies  that  flesh  is 
heir  to  ?  The  Spirit  knows  nothing  of  space  and 
distance  as  we  measure  them,  and  we  can  well  con- 
ceive of  it  in  such  power  and  fullness  that  distance 
vanishes  before  it,  so  that  the  feeble  partitions  of 
sense  and  matter  are  no  hindrance  to  the  healing 
balm  of  mind  over  mind,  and  thence  over  all  the  func- 
tions of  the  body  in  which  it  dwells. 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE   SECOND    VISIT   AT  JERUSALEM. 

T~^IFTY  days  after  the  festival  described  in  the 
■^  last  chapter  there  was  another,  called  the  Feast 
of  Weeks,  or  Pentecost.  This  also  summoned  every 
adult  male  to  Jerusalem,  and  Jesus  went  up  thither 
from  Nazareth.^  The  inference  is  that  the  interven- 
ing seven  weeks  had  been  spent  in  the  discharge  of 
the  benign  offices  of  his  private  ministry,  and  that 
the  second  miracle  at  Cana  was  only  one  of  them. 
It  is  not  likely  that  John  was  with  him  during  the 
whole  of  this  interval.  He  would  naturally  return  to 
his  home  on  the  lake  of  Galilee.     But  he  would  be 

1  It  is  a  question,  however,  among  commentators  whether  this  sec- 
ond visit  related  by  John  was  the  Feast  of  Pentecost.  Many  of  them 
make  it  another  feast  of  the  Passover.  This  is  highly  improbable  for 
many  reasons.  It  would  make  a  whole  year  interspace  the  events  of 
chapter  fifth  and  those  of  the  preceding  ones,  with  the  exception  that 
we  are  told  "  He  remained  in  Judaea  baptizing  "  after  the  first  Pass- 
over. But  the  whole  connection  indicates  that  this  was  a  short  so- 
journ. Again,  the  Passover  festival  continued  eight  days,  and,  being 
the  principal  one,  is  always  elsewhere  mentioned  by  name.  The  Feast 
of  Weeks  was  a  shorter  one,  and  would  be  less  likely  to  be  specially 
designated.  For  these  and  other  reasons,  we  take  this  second  visit  at 
Jerusalem  to  have  been  at  the  Feast  of  Weeks,  conformably  with  the 
opinions  of  <ne  earliest  fathers,  though,  it  must  be  confessed,  tho 
whole  question  can  be  decided  only  conjecturally. 


320  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL 

likely,  on  going  up  to  the  Feast  of  Pentecost,  to  take 
Nazareth  in  his  way,  and  go  in  company  with  Jesus, 
with  whom  the  most  intimate  of  friendships  had 
been  formed  ;  and  that  he  did  so  we  have  confirma- 
tory evidence  in  the  fact  that  he  alone  has  told  us 
what  Jesus  said  and  did  at  this  second  visit  to  the 
capital,  and  told  it  with  the  air  and  the  detail  of  an 
eye  and  ear  witness. 

The  Feast  of  Weeks  commemorated  the  giving  of 
the  law  from  Mount  Sinai.  It  was  also  a  feast  of 
prayer  and  praise,  in  acknowledgment  of  the  God 
of  the  harvest,  the  people  bearing  the  first  fruits  to 
the  temple  as  an  earnest  of  the  looked-for  bounty  of 
the  season.  Unlike  the  Passover  festival,  this  lasted 
only  a  single  day,  and  required  only  one  night  in 
Jerusalem.  Nothing  could  be  more  picturesque  than 
their  journeyings  to  the  city.  Neighbors  and  friends 
would  form  into  companies  of  twenty-four  each. 
They  lodged  in  the  streets  or  the  open  field  the 
night  before  starting,  for  fear  of  pollution.  This, 
under  the  soft  vernal  skies  of  Judaea,  was  attended 
with  no  exposure.  On  the  morning  of  the  following 
day  the  president  of  each  company  called  them  be- 
times with  the  salutation,  "  Arise,  and  let  us  go  up 
to  Zion  !  "  They  set  out  on  the  journey  preceded  by 
a  bullock  intended  for  sacrifice,  whose  horns  were 
gilded  and  whose  head  was  garlanded  with  olive- 
branches.  A  person  playing  on  a  pipe  went  before 
them  to  cheer  them  on  their  journey,  while  bursts  of 


THE  SECOND    VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.         32 1 

religious  fervor  were  frequently  heard  from  the  peo- 
ple, chanting  from  the  Psalms,  "I  was  glad  when 
they  said  unto  me,  Let  us  go  up  to  the  house  of  the 
Lord."  They  avoided  fatigue,  travelling  only  morn- 
ing and  evening,  and  when  nearing  the  city  they  sent 
a  messenger  to  announce  their  arrival,  whereupon 
some  of  the  priesthood  went  out  to  meet  them.  Each 
carried  his  basket  of  wheat,  grapes,  figs,  apricots, 
olives,  or  dates,  waving  it  anon  as  his  offering  to  the 
Lord.  The  baskets  of  the  rich  were  of  gold  or  silver ; 
those  of  the  poor,  of  wicker  work,  fancifully  adorned 
with  flowers.  As  they  entered  the  city  the  artificers 
in  the  shops  rose  to  salute  them  while  they  passed, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  the  city  cheered  them  from  the 
house-tops.  Some  of  the  Psalms  seem  to  have  been 
written  expressly  for  these  occasions,  and  to  have 
been  chanted  in  responses  between  the  people  of  the 
city  and  the  companies  of  the  tribes  crowding  through 
its  streets  towards  the  temple. 

Such  was  the  Feast  of  Weeks,  which  occurred  iu 
the  season  answering  to  our  month  of  May.  Jesus 
went  up  to  these  festivals,  as  we  learn  elsewhere,  not 
in  one  of  these  companies,  but  in  a  private  way,  and 
now  especially  during  his  private  ministry  would  he 
avoid  the  glare  of  notoriety.  But  he  would  find  the 
city  alive  with  the  pilgrims,  and  the  courts  of  the 
temple  and  the  ways  leading  thereto  densely  crowded 
with  people. 

Only  a  single  incident  is  related  of  this  visit,  wliich 


322  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

is  remarkable  as  having  led  on  to  the  colloquy  with 
the  Jews,  and  that  utterance  of  more  than  human 
eloquence  contained  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  fourth 
Gospel,  whose  single  annunciation,  says  Paley,  is 
worthy  of  all  the  splendid  apparatus  of  miracle  which 
the  New  Testament  records. 

Near  one  of  the  gates  of  the  temple  was  a  reservoir, 
probably  fed  by  a  stream  which  ran  near  the  temple- 
walls,  and  was  imagined,  for  that  reason,  to  have  some 
mysterious  power  of  healing.  This  virtue  was  sup- 
posed to  be  intermittent,  owing,  perhaps,  to  the  inter- 
mittent flow  of  the  waters.  Very  naturally,  porticoes 
had  been  built  around  the  spot  for  the  reception  of 
the  sick.  Hither  rhe  blind,  the  lame,  and  the  para- 
lytic were  in  the  habit  of  resorting,  each  waiting  his 
turn  to  try  the  virtue  of  the  waters.^  Hither  our 
Saviour  bent  his  footsteps.  A  crowd  of  diseased  per- 
sons, blind  and  cripple,  were  here  before  him.  That 
he  did  not  work  at  once  a  wholesale  miracle,  and  re- 
store all  this  withered  humanity,  and  cover  it  with  the 
bloom  of  health,  is  sufficient  evidence  that  his  power 
was  that  of  mind  over  mind,  and  not  arbitrary  and 
magic?\l,  as  we  are  too  apt  to  imagine.  He  walks 
imong   these  wrecks  of  men,  and  selects  one  who 

1  V/'e  understand  the  last  clause  of  the  third  verse  and  the  whole  of 
the  fourth  verse  to  be  a  gloss,  placed  originally  in  the  margin,  and  that 
the  original  text  gives  no  sanction  to  the  popular  superstition  respect- 
vng  these  waters.  The  passage  thus  included  lacks  support  from  the 
best  manuscripts,  and  has  the  air  of  a  commentary. 


THE  SECOND    VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.         323 

answers  to  him  with  gleams  of  intelligence  and  confi- 
dence. He  enters  familiarly  into  conversation  with 
him,  evidently  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  the  man 
within  his  own  interblending  and  life-giving  sphere. 
Through  the  man's  own  mind  and  memory  Jesus 
read  backward  the  history  of  the  long  thirty-eight 
years  of  disease  and  suifering.  It  was  not  that  this 
case  was  milder  than  the  others,  and  easier  to  cure, 
physically.  It  was  one  of  the  most  obstinate,  but 
easier  to  take  hold  of  spiritually,  because  Jesus  found 
somewhat  responsive  in  the  spirit  of  the  patient,  so 
that  when  he  tells  him,  "  Rise,  take  up  your  couch, 
and  go  home  with  it,"  the  deep  fountains  of  life 
gushed  forth  afresh,  flowing  from  within  outward, 
and  with  instant  creative  energy  through  the  whole 
physical  man. 

Other  cures  might  have  been  performed,  but  this 
evidently  was  selected  because  it  served  as  the  text 
of  a  conversation  on  the  Sabbath,  and  of  an  all-reveal- 
ing discourse  on  death,  life,  and  resurrection.  Fancy 
the  long,  hard  faces  of  the  puritans  of  the  law  as  they 
meet  the  man  with  his  couch  thrown  over  his  shoul- 
der walking  with  the  rejoicing  step  of  his  freshly  flow- 
ing energy.  "  It  is  the  Sabbath-day :  it  is  not  law- 
ful for  you  to  be  carrying  your  bed  !  "  When  they 
sought  out  the  author  of  the  cure,  and  laid  a  snare  for 
his  Hfe  as  a  Sabbath-breaker,  the  answer  of  Jesus 
bears  us,  though  with  few  words,  into  the  very  heart 
of  the  Divine  Beneficence  :  "  My  Father  works  con* 


324  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

TiNuousLY,^  and  so  do  I."  He  does  not  stop  his 
work  on  the  Sabbath ;  for  Hfe  every  moment  is  a 
fresh  gift  from  his  hands  ;  in  the  hearts  of  men  that 
beat  on  that  day  as  on  all  days,  and  in  all  nature,  that 
blossoms  as  brightly  on  the  seventh  day  as  on  any 
other.  If  the  Sabbath  does  not  interrupt  his  mercy, 
why  should  it  mine  ?  This  is  the  meaning  of  the 
reply,  and  nothing  could  illustrate  more  benignly  the 
new  religion  now  coming  direct  from  the  heart  of 
God. 

"  My  Father  works  continuously,  and  so  do  I."  The 
possessive  pronoun  is  emphatic.  Jesus  means  to  say 
that  now,  in  his  plenary  Messianic  consciousness,  his 
words  and  deeds  are  no  longer  his  own,  but  the 
unbroken  outflow  of  the  Divine  wisdom,  power,  and 
love.  This  is  what  offended  the  Jews.  It  was  not 
that  he  asserted  in  general  the  Divine  Fatherhood, 
but  that  Fatherhood  was  impersonated  in  himself  so 
unreservedly  that  it  spake  directly  as  of  old  from  Sinai, 
overriding  all  other  authority  and  sweeping  it  clean 
away.  It  was  not  that  he,  the  finite  human  being, 
was  "  making  himself  equal  with  God,"  but  that  in 
him  the  finite  was  being  held  in  such  complete  still- 
ness and  abeyance  that  the  Divine  wisdom  and  truth 
were  coming  forth  with  unmingled  clearness.  "  Ver- 
ily I  say  unto  you,  the  Son  does  nothing  of  himself, 

1  So  the  words  ews  fi/jTi  should  be  rendered.  They  mean  the  unrft- 
mitting  exertion  of  the  Divine  governance  and  preservation  for  the 
safety  and  welfare  of  the  creation. 


THE  SECOND    VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.         325 

but  only  what  he  sees  his  Father  doing,  for  what  the 
Father  does  the  Son  does  Hkewise.  For  the  Father 
loves  the  Son,  and  shows  him  all  that  He  does,  and 
will  show  him  greater  works  than  these,  to  your  aston- 
ishment." If  you  are  surprised  —  such  is  the  burden 
of  his  meaning  —  that  my  Word,  through  my  com- 
plete oneness  with  the  Father,  has  sent  life  through 
the  mind  and  the  limbs  of  this  cripple,  much  more 
will  you  be  surprised  at  the  wider  and  profounder 
miracles  about  to  be  wrought  by  it.  I  see  the  wrecks 
of  humanity  strewn  all  about  me,  the  death  and  ruin 
of  which  these  blind  and  withered  specimens  give 
only  the  outward  form  and  semblance.  And  the 
Father  commits  all  judgment  unto  the  Son  to  discern 
and  distinguish  this  spiritual  death  and  ruin ;  —  how 
much  of  it  is  the  sad  inheritance  of  the  past,  and  how 
much  of  it  comes  of  individual  guilt  and  voluntary 
depravity }  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  the  hour  is  com- 
ing, yea,  is  now  come,  when  those  who  have  gone 
down  into  this  death  shall  hear  the  voice  of  the  Son 
of  Man,  and  they  who  will  listen  to  it  shall  live.  For 
the  Father  has  self-subsisting  life,  and  that  life  flows 
through  the  Son.  unchanged  and  continuous,  into 
these  places  of  decay  and  death.  Marvel  not  at  this, 
for  the  hour  is  coming  when  not  those  only  who  are 
willing  to  hear  my  Word  shall  awake,  but  when  all 
who  are  in  these  sepulchres  of  spiritual  death  shall 
hear  it  also  ;  the  grace  hardened  and  impenitent  to 
have  their  quality  searched  out  and  shown,  and  their 


326  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

guilt  made  blacker  in  the  light  of  a  more  intolerable 
day.  There  is  to  be  both  a  resurrection  of  life  and  a 
resurrection  of  condemnation.  That  this  last  passage 
was  a  denunciation  of  the  Jewish  state  of  mind,  is 
evident  both  from  what  is  before  and  after,  —  a  state 
in  which  spiritual  death,  ruin,  and  darkness  come 
upon  men  not  as  an  involuntary  inheritance,  but  un- 
der light  and  privilege,  on  whom  therefore  the  light 
will  break,  not  to  save,  but  to  condemn. 

This  was  the  last  visit  of  Jesus  to  Judaea  previous 
to  the  opening  of  his  public  ministry.  If  he  had 
once  entertained  the  desire  or  the  thought  of  in- 
augurating the  new  kingdom  of  God  at  the  capital 
its  impossibility  was  now  fully  demonstrated.  Twice 
had  he  come  there  after  his  Messianic  consciousness 
had  grown  to  its  noon-day  power  and  clearness,  and 
twice  had  they  reviled  him,  rejected  him  and  sought 
to  put  him  to  death.  At  this  last  visit  they  charge 
him  capitally,  first  as  a  Sabbath-breaker  and  then 
as  a  blasphemer.  With  that  divine  vision  through 
which  he  saw  into  the  heart  of  things  he  now  reads 
them  through  and  through,  and  then  leaves  them  to 
themselves.  It  must  have  been  an  enterprise  con- 
genial with  his  fondest  desires,  perhaps  with  early 
cherished  hopes  and  imaginations,  to  begin  at  Jeru- 
salem, and  let  the  light  of  the  new  revelation  spread 
in  successive  waves,  till  his  own  people  and  nation 
were  first  involved  in  it  and  saved  by  it,  and  thence 
the  outer  heathen  darkness  penetrated  by  it  and  at 


THE  SECOND    VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM.         327 

last  completely  illumined.  We  know,  indeed,  that 
all  the  urgencies  of  a  tender  and  brooding  patriotism 
had  kindled  these  desires,  and  hopes  of  inaugurating 
his  ministry  at  Jerusalem  and  first  gathering  its  peo- 
ple, as  a  hen  gathers  her  brood  under  her  wings. 
But  this  was  not  to  be.  His  first  ministry  there  was 
tentative  and  personal,  and  proved  that  this  was  not 
to  be.  And  now  in  the  full  opening  of  his  Mes- 
sianic vision  the  whole  future  lies  before  him.  The 
path  of  triumph  is  not  less  sure,  but  it  lies  across 
Calvary.  Henceforth  the  cross  was  never  out  of 
sight.  The  closing  words  at  this  Feast  of  Weeks  are 
a  farewell  to  Jerusalem,  as  far  as  these  first  hopes  and 
purposes  may  have  been  concerned.  There  is,  even 
in  his  denunciation,  an  undertone  of  deeply  grieved 
and  disappointed  love  :  "  I  know  you  that  you  have 
not  the  love  of  God  in  you.  I  have  come  in  the 
name  of  my  Father  and  ye  receive  me  not ;  if  another 
shall  come  in  his  own  name,  him  ye  will  receive. 
Think  not  that  I  shall  accuse  you  to  the  Father. 
There  is  one  who  is  accusing  you,  even  Moses  in 
whom  ye  have  trusted.  For  if  ye  had  faith  in  Moses 
ye  would  have  faith  in  me,  for  he  wrote  concerning 
me.  But  if  ye  believe  not  his  writings  how  should  ye 
believe  my  words  ? " 


CHAPTER  IV. 

REMOVAL   TO    CAPERNAUM. 

THE  people  of  Galilee  dififered  vastly  in  character 
and  susceptibility  from  those  of  Judaea.  They 
were  not  such  simple  children  of  nature  as  Renan 
describes  them,  but  bold,  hardy,  and  brave,  and  with 
the  inspiration  of  liberty  thrilling  through  their  veins. 
The  best  soldiers  came  from  Galilee,  and  the  most 
dangerous  insurrections  had  their  origin  among  its 
hills.  In  our  Saviour's  day  it  had  a  dense  popula- 
tion, but  the  Jewish  element  was  not  the  principal 
nor  dominant  one.  Though  there  were  Jewish  syn- 
agogues in  all  the  cities  and  larger  towns  where 
native  Jews  and  proselytes  worshipped  together,  yet 
Phoenicians,  Syrians,  and  other  pagan  Asiatics,  min- 
gled largely  in  the  population.  The  northern  portion 
of  the  province  was  called  specially,  "  Galilee  of  the 
Gentiles."  Rough  and  primitive  in  their  manners, 
in  mind,  character,  and  religion  they  were  yet  fluid 
under  any  hand  strong  enough  to  impress  them  with 
the  divine  signature. 

Towards  the  northeastern  border  of  this  province 
the  river  Jordan  on  its  course  southward,  spreads  out 
into  the  Lake  of  Galilee,  described  on  a  preceding 


REMOVAL    TO   CAPERNAUM.  329 

page.  On  the  western  side  of  the  lake  the  hills 
trend  away  from  it,  leaving  a  plain  which  curves 
round  the  water's  edge  the  distance  of  about  eight 
miles.  Along  this  plain  and  creeping  sometimes  up 
the  hill-slopes,  were  the  five  towns  already  named, 
humble  and  obscure,  but  soon  to  become  famous. 
Their  names  are  preserved,  but  their  locality  now  is 
in  part  only  conjectural.  Bethsaida  and  Capernaum 
were  situated  towards  the  northern  head  of  the  lake, 
and  were  fishing  villages  of  considerable  thrift.  Ca- 
pernaum was  not  at  the  water's  edge,  but  climbed  up 
the  bank  and  looked  away  over  a  prospect  of  min- 
gled life  and  beauty,  and  especially  over  the  lake 
itself,  whose  surface,  except  when  broken  by  storms, 
was  rippled  only  by  fishing-boats  and  flocks  of  swim- 
ming birds  ;  or,  touched  and  changed  by  the  magic 
light  of  eventide,  the  water  seemed  to  He  on  the  bot- 
tom of  a  cup  of  gold.^ 

All  hope  of  inaugurating  the  new  religion  at  Jeru- 
salem was  at  an  end.  Jesus  removed  from  Nazareth 
and  came  to  Capernaum,  making  that  place  his  home. 
It  is  only  a  conjecture,  but  under  all  the  circum- 
stances the  conjecture  rises  to  strong  probability 
that  his  home  was  with  John  or  with  Salome,  John's 
mother,  and  perhaps  the  sister  of  Mary,  the  mother 
of  Jesus. 

Here,  among  these  protecting  hills  and  among  a 
ruder  population,  largely  heathen,  and  when  Jewish, 

1  The  figure  of  Reiiaii.    We  follow  principally  Josephus  .iiid  Calmei. 


330  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

yet  sometimes  without  the  iron  encasings  of  Jewish 
bigotry,  the  new  kingdom  of  God  was  to  have  its 
'irst  pubHc  proclamation.  Jesus  proclaimed  it  to  the 
populace  till  they  were  shaken  by  it  as  the  leaves 
of  a  forest  in  a  mighty  wind.  He  proclaimed  it  on 
the  mountains,  by  the  sea-side  to  the  fishermen  in 
their  boats,  in  the  synagogues,  and  to  the  multitudes 
who  pressed  around  him  in  throngs.  His  Word  went 
to  spiritual  natures  which  were  starving,  and  which 
were  born  into  a  new  consciousness  of  life,  that 
thence  had  its  outflowing  into  the  lower  sphere  of 
sense.  Paralytics,  maniacs,  cripples,  and  blind  men 
were  restored  under  his  hand,  and  the  dead  came 
back  to  life.  Though  his  home  was  at  Capernaum, 
to  which  he  ever  returned,  he  went  through  the 
neighboring  towns  and  cities,  crossed  over  the  lake 
into  Peraea,  and  made  journeys  beyond  Galilee  into 
Phoenicia.  None  opposed  him,  except  here  and 
there  a  few  Pharisees  who  came  as  spies  and  in- 
formers. "  Truly,"  he  exclaimed,  on  seeing  these 
multitudes  ready  to  perish  with  spiritual  hunger, 
*'  the  harvest  is  abundant,  but  the  laborers  are  few." 

He  organized  two  select  bands  or  companies,  one 
of  them  permanent,  the  other  temporary,  and  made 
them  the  heralds  of  the  new  kingdom  of  grace. 
They  could  not  have  entered  fully  into  his  thought, 
but  his  mantle  of  power  rested  upon  them  as  they 
spake  and  acted  in  his  name.  The  first  need  was 
not  so  much  truth  in  the  understanding  as  a  quick 


REMOVAL    TO   CAPERNAUM.  33 1 

ening  power  over  the  will  and  such  cleaving  through 
the  encasings  of  sense  as  to  reach  the  spiritual  na- 
ture and  bring  its  wants  distinctly  and  urgently  into 
the  consciousness.  The  company  of  twelve  was  soon 
found  and  organized.  Six  of  them  had  been  the 
disciples  of  the  Baptist,  and  Jesus  had  met  them  at 
Bethabara.  Two,  and  probably  three  of  them,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  had  been  his  personal  followers ; 
had  been  with  him  in  his  private  ministry  in  Judaea 
and  around  Nazareth,  and  been  drawn  into  the  ten- 
der intimacies  of  personal  friendship.  Most  of  them 
dwelt  on  the  shores  of  the  lake,  were  fishermen,  un- 
lettered and  rude,  but  with  natures  earnest,  hardy, 
and  glowing  with  health.  Matthew  and  the  sons  of 
Zebedee  seem  to  have  been  men  of  more  education 
and  culture  than  the  rest.  John,  already  the  com- 
panion, of  Jesus,  had  friends  and  acquaintances  at 
the  capital.  It  is  remarkable  that  all  the  twelve 
were  Galileans  except  one,  and  that  was  Judas,  who 
was  a  Jew  and  who  betrayed  his  Lord. 

Taking  into  account  the  time  and  the  occasion, 
the  charge  of  Jesus  to  these  twelve  men  after  they 
had  been  gathered  and  organized  for  their  work,  is 
most  wonderful,  and  seems  more  than  the  language 
of  inspiration.  The  synagogues  had  become  places 
where  much  freedom  of  exhortation  was  allowed. 
Any  one  who  had  a  word  to  say  was  at  liberty  to  say 
it,  provided,  of  course,  it  did  not  break  the  decorum 
of  the  place  ;   and  it  must  have  been  a  great  relief 


332  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

sometimes  from  the  monotonous  droning  of  the  read- 
ers. Into  the  synagogues  Jesus  often  went  to  speak, 
and  into  these  he  charged  his  missionaries  first 
to  go.  It  shows  how  deep  and  persistent  was  his 
yearning  towards  his  own  countrymen  and  people 
that,  notwithstanding  his  recent  rejection  at  Jerusa- 
lem, where  his  words  fell  on  their  hearts  like  strokes 
upon  an  anvil,  he  will  not  yet  give  them  up.  Still, 
up  there  in  GaUlee,  they  shall  have  the  first  offers 
of  the  divine  mercy  :  "  Go  not  away  to  the  Gentiles 
nor  enter  any  town  of  the  Samaritans,  but  go  rather 
to  the  wandering  sheep  of  the  hous3  of  Israel.'* 
And  yet  he  knows  what  commotion  this  will  make 
in  the  synagogues  ;  and  that  while  a  few  will  welcome 
his  heralds  and  believe,  the  many  will  drive  them 
away  with  cursings  and  buffetings  ;  and  he  fore- 
warns and  forearms  them  against  the  whole.  "  Lo,  I 
send  you  out  as  sheep  into  the  midst  of  wolves  :  be 
ye  therefore  wise  as  serpents  and  harmless  as  doves." 
The  other  company  consisted  of  seventy  men,  and 
they  went  out  in  pairs.  These  were  not  directed  to 
go  first  to  the  synagogues.  They  went  wherever 
there  were  ears  open  to  hear  them.  It  is  evident 
that  these  two  bands  of  missionaries  evangelized  the 
whole  of  Galilee,  and  that  its  stagnant  sea  of  spiritual 
death  was  shaken  into  surging  waves.^ 

1  Luke,  in  all  probability,  was  one  of  the  seventy.  So  say  the  early 
traditions,  and  he  alone  gives  the  history  of  their  mission,  v  ith  the 
charge  given  to  them  as  they  were  going  forth,  and  he  gives  it  with 
the  graphic  details  of  a  personal  witness. 


REMOVAL   TO   CAPERNAUM.  333 

The  public  ministry  of  Jesus  in  Galilee,  has  been 
described  by  the  synoptics ;  for  Matthew  and  Peter 
were  eye-witnesses  of  it,  and  their  personal  ex- 
perience was  mainly  with  it.  We  should  hardly 
know  from  their  narrative  that  Jesus  had  been  much 
out  of  Galilee.  They  were  not  with  him  ordinarily 
in  his  private  walks.  They  were  abroad  on  their 
journeyings  doing  the  work  which  had  been  com- 
mitted to  them,  though  at  stated  times  "  they  gathered 
themselves  together  unto  Jesus,  and  told  him  all 
things,  both  what  they  had  done  and  what  they  had 
taught."     Mark  vi.  30. 

It  does  not  come  within  our  plan  to  follow  the 
course  of  this  public  ministry,  but  rather  the  private 
ministry,  as  John  has  described  it.  The  evidence  is 
constantly  cumulative  that  the  fourth  Gospel  was 
written  by  an  eye-witness  with  the  synoptics  before 
him. 

We  will  give  an  instance  which  comes  appropri- 
ately in  this  place,  where  the  fourth  evangelist  has 
repeated  the  first  two,  plainly  to  supply  something  in 
close  connection  which  they  had  left  out  entirely. 
Soon  after  the  execution  of  John  the  Baptist,  the 
people  were  pressing  after  Jesus  in  throngs,  some  of 
them  bent  on  making  him  a  temporal  prince.  Herod 
Vad  already  taken  the  alarm.  Jesus  retires  from  the 
scene  by  taking  a  boat  with  his  disciples  and  cross- 
ing over  into  Peraea,  seeking  concealment  in  an  un- 
inhabited place  on  the  sides  of  a  mountain,  probably 


334  ^-^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL 

at  that  time  covered  with  forest.  But  the  people  see 
the  boat  put  off  from  Capernaum,  and  they  follow  on 
to  the  number  of  five  thousand,  walking  on  the  shore, 
and  keeping  the  boat  in  sight.  They  seek  out  the 
place  of  retreat,  and  Jesus,  soon  after  coming  to  the 
spot,  finds  again  a  multitude  around  him.  He  does 
not  repulse  or  rebuke  them,  but  teaches  them  still. 
They  hang  upon  his  lips  till  towards  evening,  when 
the  disciples  remind  him  that  they  are  in  a  desert 
place  and  without  food.  The  disciples  had  taken  food 
only  for  themselves.  Now  follows  the  narrative  of 
Matthew  and  Peter,  of  the  miracle  of  the  loaves  ;  of 
recrossing  the  lake  by  night,  leaving  Jesus  behind  ;  of 
the  storm  which  overtook  them  ;  of  Jesus  coming  to 
their  relief,  walking  on  the  sea ;  of  Peter  rushing  out  to 
meet  him  on  the  water,  and  sinking  in  it ;  of  the  calm- 
ing of  the  storm,  and  the  safe  landing  again  on  the 
shore  near  Capernaum  ;  of  the  people  bringing  their 
sick  on  beds,  when  they  heard  that  Jesus  had  re- 
turned ;  and  of  the  multitude  who  recrossed  the  lake 
and  sought  him  again.  All  this  is  detailed  by  Mat- 
thew and  Peter  (through  Mark),  the  latter  with  lively 
and  graphic  touches,  for  he  was  telling  his  own  strange 
experience.  But  we  never  should  hav.e  known  from 
either  of  these  writers  that  all  this  was  only  the  ex- 
ternal setting  and  frame-work  of  the  highest  truths, 
serving  merely  to  embody  and  preserve  them  for  all 
ages.  We  never  should  have  known  that  the  miracle 
of  the  loaves  was  merely  the  text  and  the  occasion  of 


REMOVAL    TO   CAPERNAUM.  335 

one  of  the  most  heavenly  discourses  that  ever  fell  from 
human  lips.  All  that  teaching  which  comprises  most 
of  the  sixth  chapter  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  respecting 
"  the  bread  which  came  down  from  heaven,"  whereof 
if  one  eat  he  shall  never  hunger,  and  which  rises  and 
flows  on  till  it  unfolds  the  doctrine  of  atonement,  of 
resurrection  from  the  dead,  of  a  blissful  immortality, 
of  an  interworking  providence  assuring  them  that  all 
whom  the  Father  gives  to  the  Christ,  shall  come  to 
him,  since  he  will  raise  them  up  at  the  last  day,  — 
all  this  was  the  sermon  for  which  the  miracle  of  the 
loaves  furnished  the  text  and  the  imagery.  It  flowed 
on  until  Jesus  merged  his  own  personality  in  the 
truth  which  he  revealed  to  the  world.  The  scene 
of  the  cross  ever  before  him,  is  now  transfigured 
and  the  body  to  be  rent  upon  it,  and  the  blood  to 
be  poured  out,  are  taken  up  and  transfused  in  the 
glowing  language  of  analogy.  So  completely  is  he 
identified  with  his  cause,  that  he  acknowledges  no 
personal  existence,  except  as  the  very  form  and  body 
of  the  truth  he  brings.  "I  am  the  living  bread 
which  comes  down  from  heaven.  Let  men  break 
my  body  and  eat  my  flesh  and  drink  my  blood. 
Whoever  does  this  hath  eternal  life,  and  I  will  raise 
him  up  at  the  last  day." 

All  this  was  preached  to  those  people  who  ate  of 
the  loaves  and  were  filled,  partly  on  the  shore  after 
recrossing  the  lake,  and  partly  in  the  synagogue  at 
Capernaum,  close  by.     Matthew  and  Peter  make  no 


336  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

report  of  it,  for  the  obvious  reason  that  they  did  not 
understand  it,  and  it  did  not  Uve  in  their  memories. 
They  were  "  hard  sayings "  to  most  of  the  twelve ; 
and  many  of  the  other  disciples  "fell  away"  after 
hearing  it,  for  they  stuck  in  the  letter  and  could  not 
ascend  so  high.  Matthew  and  Peter  were  greatly  im- 
pressed with  the  miracles  and  all  the  external  phe- 
nomena, and  were  rapt  in  wonder  by  them  at  the 
time.  These  they  describe  with  scenic  power  and 
vividness.  But  the  doctrine  of  which  all  else  was 
only  the  type  and  symbol,  and  which,  in  the  mind  of 
Jesus  transcended  all  the  rest  in  importance,  was  con- 
gruous with  the  very  mind  and  genius  of  the  favorite 
disciple  who  had  long  shared  the  familiar  thoughts  of 
the  Teacher,  and  been  drawn  up  towards  the  heaven 
in  which  he  lived.  John  makes  mention  of  the  mira- 
cle of  the  loaves,  but  goes  on  straightway  to  report 
the  divine  discoursings,  for  which  the  miracle  served 
only  to  furnish  the  text  and  the  imagery.  It  is 
another  illustration  of  a  fact  which  will  meet  us  con- 
tinually, that  the  four  Gospels  are  not  parallel,  but 
convergent,  and  that  the  fourth  lies  at  the  very  heart 
of  Christianity.  That  Matthew  and  Peter  should  have 
been  impressed  mainly  with  the  miracles  and  the 
physical  concomitants,  accords  with  all  that  we  know 
of  the  character  of  their  minds  especially,  at  this  stage 
of  discipleship ;  that  John  alone,  who  had  now  been 
in  intimate  communion  with  Jesus  for  a  whole  year, 
should  have  been  drawn  up  into  its  spiritual  signifi- 


REMOVAL    TO  CAPERNAUM.  337 

cance,  is  most  natural.  It  entered  deeply  into  his 
thought,  so  that  he  not  only  reports  the  discourse  at 
length,  as  if  that  were  more  important  than  anything 
else,  but  its  imagery  glows  afterwards  in  the  scenery 
of  the  Apocalypse.  Other  disciples  thought  such 
discourse  fanatical,  and  fell  off.  "  How  can  this  Man 
give  us  his  flesh  to  eat .? "  Some  of  the  twelve 
wavered.  "Will  ye  also  go  away.?"  Only  John 
drank  in  the  whole  of  it,  and  has  given  a  full  report. 
22 


CHAPTER   V. 

THE    THIRD    VISIT  AT  JERUSALEM. 

WHILE  Galilee  was  moved  through  its  breadth 
and  depth,  and  Jesus  was  drawing  the  gaze  of 
all  ranks  upon  himself,  another  festival  supervened 
which  summoned  all  the  Jewish  adult  males  to  Jeru- 
salem. The  Feast  of  Tabernacles  occurred  in  Sep- 
tember, and  was  attended  with  much  peaceful  pomp 
and  ceremony.  It  commemorated  the  sojourn  of  the 
children  of  Israel  in  the  desert  where  they  encamped 
in  movable  tents  and  tabernacles.  It  was  also  a  fes- 
tival of  thanksgiving  for  the  ingathering  harvest.  It 
lasted  eight  days.  The  streets  of  Jerusalem  and  all 
the  environs  were  crowded  with  arbors  woven  of 
evergreen  boughs.  These  were  reared,  too,  on  the 
flat  roofs  of  the  houses,  so  that  the  city  presented  the 
appearance  of  being  almost  buried  in  a  mighty  forest, 
gleaming  out  here  and  there  through  the  darkly  em- 
bowering foliage.  In  these  arbors  the  people  lodged 
during  the  festival ;  every  loyal  Jew  deserting  his 
house  for  these  temporary  dweUings.  The  people 
formed  processions,  when  each  held  in  his  hand 
branches  of  palm,  myrtle,  and  willow,  waving  them 
and   singing  hosannas  to  the    Lord  of  the  harvest. 


THE    THIRD    VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  339 

Tiie  eighth  day  of  the  festival  was  called  "the  grand 
day,"  because  the  rites  were  specially  imposing. 
Close  by  the  temple  walls  was  the  fountain  of  Siloam, 
a  spring  which  bubbled  up  and  became  a  little  brook 
that  channeled  its  way  into  the  Cedron.  A  pro- 
cession was  formed,  reaching  continuously  from  the 
fountain  into  the  temple  courts,  carrying  pitchers  of 
water,  winding  round  the  altar,  waving  their  palms 
and  shouting  hosannas,  pouring  the  contents  of  their 
pitchers  down  at  the  foot  of  the  altar,  and  singing, 
"  With  joy  we  draw  water  from  the  wells  of  salva- 
tion." The  rite  was  attended  with  dancing,  and  the 
festival  closed  with  an  illumination  of  the  courts  and 
porches  of  the  temple.  It  was  celebrated  with  so 
much  of  picturesque  pomp  that  it  drew  the  admiring 
notice  of  heathen  nations. 

There  was  a  pause  in  the  public  ministry  of  Jesus, 
as  the  people  of  Galilee  were  wending  their  way 
towards  Jerusalem  to  attend  this  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles. Some  of  his  kinsmen  urged  him  to  go  up  to 
the  capital,  and  there  proclaim  himself,  not  believing 
that  the  Messiah  was  to  break  upon  the  world  from 
an  obscure  corner  of  Galilee.  Go,  they  said,  to  this 
great  feast  and  publish  your  claims.  Jesus  replied 
to  them  as  we  construe  his  words  :  "  You  can  go 
without  me.     I  am  not  to  celebrate  this  feast,^  for 

1  John  vii.  8.  There  is  some  doubt  as  to  the  true  reading  of  this 
text,  and  whether  ohn.  or  oI/ttoj  should  be  preferred,  /.  e.,  whether  Jesus 
•aid,  '■  I  am  not  going,"  or  "  I  am  not  going  ;/<?7t'."     Griesbach  adopts 


340  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

the  time  is  not  yet  come  for  me  to  be  sacrificed. 
You  can  go  in  safety  ;  I  cannot.  The  world  does  not 
hate  you  as  it  hates  me."  He  means,  "  I  am  not 
going  to  keep  this  festival."  Its  legal  observance 
would  have  required  him  to  be  at  Jerusalem  at  its 
beginning,  to  go  up  in  one  of  the  processions  and 
in  a  public  manner.  So  he  says,  I  am  not  going  to 
observe  this  feast ;  and  he  waited  till  the  crowds 
had  gone  up,  and  the  public  ways  were  still,  and 
Jerusalem  was  in  the  midst  of  its  rejoicings,  before 
he  started.  He  knew  that  in  that  city  he  stood 
charged  with  two  capital  crimes :  Sabbath-breaking 
and  blasphemy.  He  knew  that  the  stir  in  GaUlee 
had  alarmed  the  Sanhedrim,  and  that  if  he  appeared 
now  in  his  public  character  at  the  capital  his  arrest 
and  execution  were  certain.  So  he  tells  his  kinsmen  : 
"  Go  up  yourselves,  I  am  not  going  to  celebrate  this 
festival."  And  yet  with  what  unspeakable  tender- 
ness does  he  yearn  towards  the  devoted  city !  There 
are  his  own  people  and  they  of  his  own  lineage  ;  there 
too  he  has  made  many  disciples  during  his  private 
ministry  and  among  its  humbler  classes,  and  they  will 
look  with  longing  eyes  for  him  at  the  festival.  The 
crowds  gone,  and  the  ways  still,  he  goes  up  in  a 
private  manner,  though  he  comes  into  the  very  jaws 
of  danger  and  death. 

Of  course  he  would  not  appear  there  as  in  Galilee, 

the  former,  and  we  think  rightly.  Either  way  there  is  no  room  here, 
as  Porphyry  pretends,  for  impeaching  our  Lord's  veracity. 


THE   THIRD    VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  34 1 

at  the  head  of  twelve  organized  followers.  The  fes- 
tival was  half  over  when  he  arrived.  There  is  evi- 
dence, as  we  have  said,  that  John  had  friends  and 
acquaintances  in  the  city,  and  we  infer  that  during 
this  third  visit  he  was  there  with  his  Master,  as  he 
reports  minutely  the  incidents  and  conversations 
of  which  he  must  have  been  an  eye  and  ear  wit- 
ness. 

True  enough,  the  old  charge  of  Sabbath-breaking 
comes  up  again.  The  case  of  the  cripple  cured  at 
the  pool  of  Bethesda  is  remembered,  and  there  are 
whisperings  among  the  crowd,  "  Where  is  He  }  "  He 
ventures  into  the  temple  and  teaches  by  personal 
intercourse  and  conversation,  and  he  is  making  con- 
verts from  among  the  common  people.  The  Sanhe- 
drim are  eagle-eyed,  and  watch  all  that  is  going  on. 
They  appoint  police-officers  to  arrest  him  as  a  Sab- 
bath-breaker, which  under  Jewish  law  was  punish- 
able with  death  by  stoning.  These  police-officers 
lurk  among  the  crowd,  and  wait  their  opportunity, 
but  Jesus  discerns  the  fact,  and  is  acquainted  with 
all  their  wiles. 

Chapters  seventh,  eighth,  ninth,  and  tenth,  as  far 
as  verse  twenty-second,  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  describe 
what  took  place  at  this  festival  and  soon  after,  in  the 
intercourse  of  Jesus  with  the  Jews  at  the  capital 
He  remained  after  the  festival  was  over,  holding  col- 
loquies with  the  groups  that  gathered  about  him  ; 
mixed  companies,  some  of  whom  scoffed  and  caviled  ; 


342  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

some  of  whom  were  receptive  under  his  teachings, 
but  timid  and  reticent,  knowing  that  an  overwhelm- 
ing odium  from  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  was  rest- 
ing upon  him.  No  less  than  seven  of  these  personal 
colloquies  are  described  by  John,  who  evidently  kept 
with  Jesus  both  in  his  retirement  at  night  and  in 
his  walks  by  day.  These  conversations  are  exceed- 
ingly characteristic.  They  are  not  given  evidently 
in  the  order  of  time,  but  they  are  photographs  of  the 
temper  of  the  times,  of  the  Spirit  of  Jesus,  and  of 
well-known  traits  of  human  nature  ;  and  have  that 
air  of  reality  which  no  romance  ever  succeeds  in 
imitating  to  entire  perfection.  Sometimes  the  hear- 
rers  and  spectators  are  charmed,  and  half  convinced 
by  the  speech  and  bearing  of  the  wonderful  man. 
Then  they  bethink  themselves.  The  Messiah  of  their 
imaginations  was  to  come  in  some  supernatural  and 
unaccountable  way  :  "  We  know  whence  this  man  is. 
When  the  Messiah  comes  no  one  will  know  whence 
he  is."  "  The  Messiah  was  to  break  upon  us  out 
of  some  splendid  supernatural  halo  ;  but  we  know 
all  about  this  man,  and  just  the  place  he  comes  from 
up  there  in  Galilee,  and  there  is  no  great  mystery 
about  him."  John  would  not  have  reported  such 
talk  as  this  unless  he  had  heard  it.  No  romancer 
would  have  done  it,  bent  on  glorifying  his  hero. 

That  Jesus,  after  the  full  opening  of  his  Messianic 
consciousness,  foresaw  and  forecalculated  his  own 
•^sath  and  resurrection,  is  not  inferred  from  any  ob- 


THE   THIRD    VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  343 

sciire  intimations  which  might  have  been  afterwards 
exaggerated  and  misapplied  by  his  fondly  mistaken 
disciples.  These  form  the  bm"den  of  discourse,  con- 
versation, and  prophecy,  and  his  forecast  of  these 
events  shapes  the  whole  plan  of  his  ministry.  Leave 
out  the  discourses,  conversations,  and  plans  of  action 
in  which,  his  death  and  resurrection  are  presupposed 
and  necessarily  involved,  and  there  is  nothing  left  in 
the  life  of  Jesus  which  has  any  coherence  or  signifi- 
cance. In  this  third  visit  to  the  capital,  his  own 
death,  and  the  manner  of  it  which  he  forecasts  so 
persistently  and  clearly,  is  a  subject  of  constant  refer- 
ence, his  mind  being  full  of  it,  and  the  minds  of  his 
hearers  being  of  course  utterly  incapable  of  taking  in 
the  meaning  of  it.  To  the  men  who  he  knew  were 
plotting  for  his  arrest  and  execution,  he  said,  "  I  shall 
be  with  you  but  a  little  while  longer.  You  will  seek 
me,  but  you  will  not  find  me,  and  where  I  shall  be 
you  cannot  come."  They  thought  he  was  planning 
an  escape  out  of  their  hands.  "  What  can  he  mean  } 
Will  he  go  to  the  Greeks  and  teach  the  Greeks  .? " 
But  again  afterward  he  speaks  more  openly  and  ex- 
plicitly, "  I  lay  down  my  life  to  receive  it  again.  No 
one  takes  it  from  me,  but  I  lay  it  down  of  my  own 
accord.  I  am  commissioned  to  lay  it  down  and  I 
am  commissioned  to  receive  it  again.  This  charge 
I  received  from  my  Father."  Some,  very  naturally, 
thought  him  insane.  "  He  is  mad,  why  do  you  listep 
to  him."     Others,  charmed  by  his  words  and  amazed 


344  "^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

by  his  miracles,  are  simply  perplexed  and  bewildered. 
"  Can  a  maniac  speak  like  him  and  cure  cripples  and 
blind  men  ? "  To  suppose  that  Jesus  had  not  this 
clear  supernatural  forecast,  is  to  assume  that  these 
details  of  conversation  were  invented  afterwards ; 
and  this  is  to  assume  that  some  dishonest  forger, 
a  century  after  the  events,  photographed  the  living 
manners  of  Jerusalem  and  the  inmost  life  of  Judaism 
with  a  subtle  genius  transcending  that  of  Scott  or 
Dickens  ;  and  in  addition  to  this  put  into  the  mouth 
of  one  of  his  characters  discourses  so  much  more 
divine  than  any  which  ever  fell  from  human  lips,  that 
they  have  been  bread  from  heaven  to  our  hungering 
humanity  for  eighteen  hundred  years  ! 

CURE   OF   THE   BLIND    MAN. 

The  cure  of  the  blind  man,  and  the  incidents  and 
conversations  which  followed  thereupon,  are  transac- 
tions as  full  of  nature  as  they  can  hold.  Here  was 
a  miracle  right  under  the  eye  of  the  Sanhedrim,  and 
in  the  temple-court,  and  the  people  have  seen  it.  It 
will  not  do  to  arrest  and  execute  this  man  unless  the 
fact  can  be  accounted  for  or  explained  away.  They 
appeal  to  the  parents,  hoping  the  parents  will  deny 
that  there  was  any  blindness  in  the  case.  They 
evade  most  ingeniously,  and  are  non-committal :  "All 
we  know  about  it  is  that  he  was  born  blind  and  that 
now  he  sees." 

"  Who  opened  his  eyes  } " 


THE    THIRD    VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM,  345 

*  He  is  of  age,  ask  him  f  " 

Then  follow  the  cross-examination  of  the  young 
man  himself,  and  his  excommunication  and  the  re- 
buke of  Jesus  to  the  Pharisees  for  their  own  in- 
curable blindness,  ascending  as  usual  from  natural 
things  to  spiritual.  The  miracle  is  only  the  nucleus 
of  a  whole  texture  of  natural  events,  and  the  discours- 
ings  which  proceed  from  them,  which  are  indissolu- 
bly  bound  together  with  the  plainest  marks  of  his- 
toric certainty,  and  the  most  subtile  shadings  of 
human  character. 

SERMON   AT   THE   POURING   OF   THE   WATER. 

Once,  however,  at  this  festival,  Jesus  broke  from 
his  reserve  and  proclaimed  himself  in  tones  that 
pierced  the  crowd  and  held  them  in  the  stillness 
of  profoundest  awe.  It  was  under  circumstances 
where  it  is  hard  to  conceive  it  possible  that  his  divine 
eloquence  should  have  been  either  repressed  or  re- 
sisted. On  the  last  day  of  the  feast,  "  the  grand 
day,"  the  long  procession  was  streaming  up  from  the 
spring  of  Siloam,  winding  through  the  courts  and 
circling  the  altar,  pouring  out  their  pitchers  of  water, 
waving  their  palm-boughs,  and  chanting,  "  With  joy 
we  draw  water  from  the  wells  of  salvation."  The 
court  of  the  Gentiles  would  be  thronged  with  sym- 
pathizing crowds  through  which  the  procession 
would  wend  its  way.  The  rite  commemorated  the 
miracle  in  the  desert,  when  Moses  smote  the  rock 


346  THE   FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

with  his  rod  and  the  water  gushed  out  of  it.  The 
people  must  have  had  some  perception  of  the  spirit- 
ual significance  of  the  event  they  were  celebrating 
with  joyous  hosannas.  The  police-officers  were  in 
the  crowd,  watching  for  what  they  might  deem  the 
last  opportunity  to  arrest  the  Sabbath-breaker  and 
blasphemer.  But  Jesus  knew  the  men,  and  in  his 
hour  of  divine  exaltation  was  conscious  that  he  held 
them  and  the  crowd  at  his  command.  The  rock, 
smitten  by  the  prophet's  rod  and  turned  to  a  spring 
for  the  thirsting  travellers  ;  Siloam,  gushing  forth  and 
flowing  on  into  the  Cedron,  become  the  text  and 
imagery  of  his  discourse.  "He  stood  and  cried," 
says  the  record  ;  implying  that  his  voice  broke  on 
the  crowd  above  the  murmurs  and  the  hosannas  with 
such  startling  power  and  clearness  that  it  arrested 
them  and  held  them.  "  If  any  man  thirst  let  him 
come  unto  me  and  drink.  Verily  I  say  unto  you  if 
any  one  have  faith  in  me  his  heart  shall  be  a  spring 
out  of  which  shall  flow  rivers  of  living  water."  It 
is  plain  that  John  only  reports  the  topic  and  heads 
of  discourse,  and  that  it  flowed  on  till  it  unfolded  the 
truths  of  the  new  reign  of  God,  and  a  new  dispensa- 
tion of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

The  Evangelists  do  not  describe  our  Saviour's 
manner  from  which  we  infer  that  he  had  none  which 
drew  attention  to  it.  They  describe  his  power  by 
the  effect  his  words  produced  in  searching  out  the 
secret  of  the  soul,  and  subduing  it  under  a  super nat- 


THE   THIRD    VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  347 

'iral  awe.  This  convinced  and  conquered  more  than 
iny  external  miracles  could  do  which  were  only  inci- 
dental to  it,  for  it  struck  on  the  deeper  chords  that 
thrilled  through  the  more  mysterious  realms  of  con- 
sciousness. So  now  many  believed  simply  from  hear- 
ing his  discourse,  and  only  because  his  words  smote 
them  as  with  supernatural  power.  "  Surely,"  they 
said,  "  this  is  the   Prophet." 

The  seventy  judges,  which  constituted  the  Sanhe- 
drim, held  their  session  in  a  room  at  a  corner  of  one 
of  the  courts  of  the  temple,  and  it  was  not  far  off. 
The  police-officers  slink  away  from  the  crowd  and 
report  themselves  to  the  judges. 

"  Why  have  ye  not  arrested  him  and  brought  him 
hither .? " 

"  Never  man  spake  like  this  man." 

HIS   EXISTENCE   BEFORE   ABRAHAM. 

At  another  of  the  seven  colloquies  which  John  has 
reported  on  this  occasion,  they  attempted  again  to 
take  his  life.  It  was  also  in  one  of  the  temple  courts, 
probably  in  the  court  of  the  Gentiles,  under  whose 
open  porticoes  the  devotees  of  the  temple  were  ac- 
customed to  assemble  and  hold  converse,  as  in  a  kind 
of  theological  exchange.  Here  Jesus  had  gathered 
around  him  a  group  of  sympathizing  friends  and 
believers,  and  was  exhorting  them  to  be  steadfast. 
"  My  truth  shall  make  you  free,"  —  referring  to  the 
Roman  subjection  under  which  the  Jews  were  chaf- 


348  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

ing,  and  the  higher  than  civil  freedom  which  was 
now  within  their  reach.  But  the  cavillers  were  pres- 
ent, and  Jesus  sees  the  eyes  of  the  police-officers 
gleaming  through  the  crowd.  The  cavillers  boast  of 
their  descent  from  Abraham  as  conferring  a  higher 
freedom  and  nobler  pedigree  than  Jesus  could  give. 
Jesus  charges  them  with  their  murderous  intent  : 
"  Ye  are  seeking  to  kill  me,  which  Abraham  would 
not  have  done.  Your  father  is  the  Devil,  for  you  are 
ready  to  execute  his  purposes,  and  he  was  a  murderer 
from  the  beginning."  Then  alluding  to  the  eternal 
life  which  was  beyond  their  reach,  he  says,  "  Ver- 
ily I  say  unto  you,  whoever  obeys  my  teaching  will 
never  see  death ; "  meaning,  though  you  kill  the 
body,  you  cannot  touch  the  life  within.  This  they 
cannot  understand.  "  Abraham  died,  and  the  proph- 
ets died,  whom  do  you  make  yourself.^ "  Jesus  re- 
plies, "  Your  father  Abraham  exulted  that  he  might 
see  my  day,  and  he  saw  it  and  rejoiced."  Sticking  in 
the  letter  they  rejoin,  "  You  are  not  yet  fifty  years 
old,  and  have  you  seen  Abraham  t "  Jesus  replies,  in 
a  passage  which  has  been  made  famous  by  the  contro- 
versies which  have  proceeded  from  it :  "  Before  Abra- 
ham was  born  I  am."  Notwithstanding  the  contro- 
versies, we  can  find  but  one  meaning  to  it :  Jesus  is 
claiming  that  God  in  a  peculiar  sense  is  his  Father ; 
and  for  this  reason  they  are  charging  him  with  blas- 
phemy.    We  must  remember  that  his   Messianic 


THE   THIRD    VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  349 

consciousness  is  now  at  its  meridian  fullness  and 
power,  and  that  he  claims  that  he  is  not  speaking 
from  himself,  nor  from  any  dictates  of  finite  intelli- 
gence ;  but  that  the  Word,  or  the  Eternal  Reason,  is 
speaking  continuously  through  him,  as  much  so  as 
when  it  spoke  from  Sinai.  He  claims  that  his  own 
finite  personality  is  lost  in  these  reveahng  annun- 
ciations, or  is  held  in  perfect  abeyance.  It  is  not  a 
mortal  man  that  is  speaking  to  you,  he  would  say, 
but  the  Logos  himself.  It  is  one  with  me  and  my 
F'ather.  Passing  into  this  divine  consciousness  and 
speaking  from  it,  he  uses  the  first  person  singular, 
claiming  that  the  Logos  has  become  incorporate  with 
his  own  being  and  substance.  On  any  other  theory 
the  language  of  these  discourses  is  very  often  utterly 
unwarrantable,  and  would  have  furnished  the  Jews 
with  just  ground  for  their  charges  of  blasphemy. 

When  he  declares,  then,  "  before  Abraham  was  I 
am,"  he  means  to  say,  the  Eternal  Word  from  which 
I  speak  is  not  like  Abraham  and  the  prophets,  who 
grow  old,  or  to  whom  you  can  apply  the  measure  of 
your  mortal  years.  It  has  no  past,  and  no  future,  for 
it  is  without  beginning  or  end  or  succession  of  days. 
To  these  cavillers,  boasting  of  their  ancient  and  hon- 
orable descent,  comes  the  annunciation :  The  Being 
who  is  speaking  to  you  is  the  Eternal  Now,  who  is 
timeless,  —  cutting  short  their  driveling  logic  ;  and 
it  could  not,  as  we  conceive,  have  been  more  con* 
cisely  and  sublimely  done 


350  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

They  understand  him,  evidently  now,  for  they  re* 
gard  this  as  blasphemy.  They  take  up  stones  to  cast 
at  him,  and  would  have  murdered  him,  but  Jesus 
suddenly  withdrew  and  concealed  himself,  and  passed 
out  of  the  temple  by  a  private  way.^ 

THE    FAMILY    AT   BETHANY. 

Whither  did  he  go  }  Luke — who  as  we  have  seen, 
must  have  obtained  much  that  he  has  written  from 
John  and  his  household  —  has  told  us  of  one  place 
where  Jesus  went  at  this  time  ;  and  the  fact  indicates 
what  were  his  resorts  and  private  communings  when 
he  withdrew  from  the  strife  of  men.  He  sought  the 
soothing  intercourse  of  personal  friendship  in  the  re- 
treats of  social  and  domestic  love.  How  many  of 
these  friendships  must  have  been  formed  among  the 
families  in  and  around  Jerusalem  who  had  become 
receptive  of  his  Word  and  believers  in  his  Messiah- 
ship  !  They  would  be  mostly  if  not  entirely  among 
the  common  people,  who  would  conceal  the  fact  from 
the  respectable  dignitaries  at  the  capital. 

1  So  we  read  the  passage,  John  viii.  59,  which  has  been  variously 
interpreted.  Some  render  iKpv$ri,  "made  himself  invisible,"  by 
which  the  advocates  of  the  genuineness  of  the  fourth  Gospel  under- 
stand a  miracle ;  the  opposers  a  trace  of  Gnosticism.  Neither  is 
found  in  the  passage,  unless  by  being  first  put  into  it  by  the  expositor. 
The  latter  clause  hi€\6i>t/  ....  ovrcas,  "going  through  the  midst  of 
them  and  so  passed  by,"  is  rejected  by  Griesbach  on  external  grounds 
as  a  gloss,  as  also  by  some  of  the  best  expositors.  It  probably  got 
into  the  text  as  a  gloss  copied  from  Luke  iv.  30.  The  whole  pas^•age 
would  read,  fairly  rendered,  "  He  concealed  himself  from  them  and 
Ijassed  out  of  the  temple." 


THE   THIRD    VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  35 1 

About  two  miles  east  of  Jerusalem,  beyond  the 
Mount  of  Olives,  near  the  foot  of  the  mount,  and  on 
the  road  to  Jericho,  was  one  of  these  families,  evi- 
dently in  middle  or  humble  life,  to  which  Jesus  re- 
sorted for  safety,  repose,  and  the  intercourse  of  per- 
sonal love.  Lazarus  and  his  two  sisters  not  only  had 
faith  in  him,  but  had  become  endeared  to  him  by 
offices  of  hospitahty  and  affection.  They  must  have 
been  among  his  earlier  converts  and  disciples,  for 
when  Luke  introduces  them  to  our  notice  at  this 
time,  we  find  their  intercourse  to  be  of  the  most 
sacred  and  confidential  nature.  The  characters  are 
individualized  by  a  few  unconscious  strokes  of  the 
pen.  Mary  sits  at  his  feet,  lost  to  everything  beside, 
as  she  drinks  the  wisdom  from  his  lips.  Martha  is 
the  more  anxious  and  careful,  lest  the  comfort  of  a 
guest  so  honored  and  beloved  will  not  be  attended  to. 
Jesus  puts  them  both  at  ease  by  a  few  words  char- 
acteristic of  his  religion  and  of  himself  A  delight- 
ful picture  of  tranquillity  and  rest  after  the  stormy 
controversies  at  the  temple  ! 

So  ended  the  third  visit  to  Jerusalem.  These  jour- 
neys to  the  capital  were  plainly  episodes  during  his 
more  public  ministry  in  Galilee,  and  while  his  organ- 
ized followers  there  were  achieving  their  great  suc- 
cess. Thither  he  would  return,  and  at  his  quiet  home 
in  Capernaum,  and  amid  a  people  receptive  of  his 
Word,  receive  the  reports  of  his  evangelists  as  they 
came  back  with  tidings  of  their  mission. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

FOURTH    VISIT   AT  JERUSALEM, 

A  LL  this  while  both  the  Seventy  and  the  twelve 
•^^-  were  evangelizing  Galilee,  and  probably  regions 
beyond  its  limits.  They  were  amenable  only  to  the 
Roman  power,  and  not  immediately  under  the  shadow- 
ing and  oppressive  authority  of  the  Jewish  Sanhedrim. 
We  have  no  intimations  that  as  a  body,  either  of 
these  organizations  attended  upon  the  Jewish  festi- 
vals, or  that  their  work  extended  within  the  limits  of 
Judaea.  But  they  were  to  return  to  Jesus  at  Caper- 
naum, and  bring  to  him  a  report  of  what  they  had 
done.  The  Seventy  did  so,  it  would  seem,  about  this 
time,  when  Jesus  returned  again  from  Jerusalem  and 
its  vicinity,  and  escaped  from  the  snares  which  were 
there  involving  him,  to  this  quiet  spot  among  the 
sheltering  hills  of  Galilee.  The  Twelve,  ere  this,  had 
reported  to  him  ;  but  the  mission  of  the  Seventy  was 
more  general  and  more  remote.^ 

The  whole  province  of  Galilee  had  been  shaken  as 

1  "And  the  apostles  gathered  themselves  together  unto  Jesus,  and 

told  him  all  things,  both  what  they  had  done  and  what  they  had 

taught."     Mark  vi.  30.     "  And  the  seventy  returned  again  with  joy 

aying,  Lord,  even  the  devils  are  subject  unto  us  through  thy  name." 

Luke  X.  18. 


FOURTH  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  353 

from  the  slumbers  of  death.  The  words  of  Jesus  to 
the  Jews  when  he  cured  the  cripple,  had  become 
verified,  — "  The  time  is  coming,  and  is  now  come, 
when  the  dead  shall  hear  the  voice  of  the  Son  of 
God,  and  they  that  will  Hsten  shall  live." 

There  was  a  class  of  men  very  common  in  those 
days,  called  demoniacs.  They  were  not  ordinary 
cases  of  insanity,  but  cases  in  which  men's  voluntary 
powers  had  been  overlaid  and  possessed,  even  to  the 
bodily  organs,  as  if  the  unseen  world  of  evil  was 
breaking  visibly  into  the  world  of  matter.  They 
were  the  most  difficult  of  all  cases  to  cure,  requir- 
ing a  stronger  and  more  pervading  influx  of  power 
through  the  whole  organism  of  mind  and  body,  and 
the  disciples  were  not  always  equal  to  the  work. 
But  the  Seventy  returned  with  the  joyful  report  of 
their  success :  "  Even  the  demons  are  subject  to  us 
through  thy  name."  Jesus  is  rapt  into  the  highest 
ecstasy  on  finding  the  success  of  his  Word  so  wide- 
spread and  complete.  "  I  see  Satan  falling  from 
heaven  like  lightning."  "I  see  the  Evil  Power,  so 
long  enthroned  over  the  minds  of  men,  vanish  like 
a  meteor  trailing  down  the  sky."  And  then  con- 
trasting his  repulse  at  Jerusalem  with  his  reception 
among  these  rude  and  simple-hearted  Galileans,  he 
breaks  out  in  a  glad  strain  of  thanksgiving :  "  I 
glorify  thee,  Father,  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  be- 
cause though  thou  hast  hidden  these  things  from  the 
wise   and   prudent,   thou   hast   revealed   them    unto 


354  ^^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

babes."  It  is  impossible  to  understand  this  lofty  and 
exultant  strain,  except  as  we  figure  to  ourselves  the 
Saviour  escaping  barely  with  his  life,  from  his  per- 
sonal ministry  at  the  capital,  and  seeing  the  result  of 
his  public  ministry  at  Capernaum,  which  shook  all 
Galilee  from  the  slumbers  of  spiritual  death. 

Within  two  years  after  the  removal  to  Capernaum, 
the  change  had  become  so  great  in  Galilee,  that  the 
authorities  at  Jerusalem  saw  the  revolution  rolling  up 
to  the  capital,  and  they  saw  that  unless  it  could  be 
arrested,  they  must  inevitably  go  down  before  it. 
Unquestionably  they  were  so  far  right.  From  any 
possible  view  which  the  ecclesiastical  powers  were 
capable  of  entertaining,  there  was  now  nothing  for 
them  to  do  but  to  put  out  of  the  way  the  author  of 
the  new  movement,  which  was  already  shaking  the 
ground  beneath  them.  How  insecure  they  were  in 
their  seats,  we  shall  readily  imagine  when  we  call  to 
mind  the  triumphal  entry  of  Jesus  into  Jerusalem  at 
the  last  Passover  festival,  with  a  throng  of  people, 
many  of  them  from  Galilee,  shouting  hosannas  and 
strewing  his  way  with  palms. 

He  must  have  remained  several  months  in  Galilee, 
seeing  and  hearing  the  results  of  his  organized  min- 
istry and  inspiring  it  with  his  presence.  His  next 
visit  to  Jerusalem  was  at  the  "  Feast  of  Dedication," 
which  took  place  in  December.  This  festival  did  not 
claim  any  divine  authority,  nor  did  it  require  the 
presence  of  Jewish  believers  at  Jerusalem.     It  was 


FOURTH  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  355 

appointed  by  Judas  Maccabaeus  as  a  new  dedication 
of  the  temple  and  altar  after  they  had  been  polluted 
by  Antiochus  Epiphanes ;  and  the  festival  down  to 
the  time  of  our  Saviour  had  been  kept  with  rejoic- 
ings and  illuminations.  Jesus  is  drawn  again  from 
his  work  in  Galilee,  It  is  apparent,  too,  that  only 
John,  his  most  intimate  disciple,  went  with  him  from 
Capernaum. 

JESUS   WITHDRAWS   TO    BETHABARA. 

He  appears  again  in  one  of  the  porticoes  of  the 
temple,  and  holds  conversation  with  the  people  who 
gather  there.  But  he  is  more  reticent  than  at  his 
last  visit,  for  he  knows  that  the  plottings  are  thicken- 
ing and  ripening,  and  he  will  not  surrender  his  life 
till  his  work  in  Galilee  is  complete.  He  comes  to 
the  capital  now,  evidently  not  so  much  to  make  new 
converts  there  as  to  hold  communings  with  those  who 
already  believe  on  him,  and  make  them  strong  for 
the  trial  hour.  Observing  this  reticence  and  caution, 
the  Jews  came  around  him,  and  said,  "  How  long  will 
you  hold  us  in  suspense  "i  If  you  are  the  Messiah, 
tell  us  plainly  } "  He  reminds  them  that  they  are  not 
of  his  fold  and  will  not  believe  ;  that  he  has  come  to 
find  his  own,  and  does  find  them  ;  that  no  robber  can 
pluck  them  out  of  his  hands,  because  they  were  given 
him  by  the  Father,  and  he  and  the  Father  are  one. 
This  revives  the  old  charge  of  blasphemy,  and  kin- 
dles, as  with  a  spark,  the  rage  which  since  the  last 


356  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

encounter  had  been  gathering  strength  and  deter- 
mination. They  take  measures  for  his  immediate  ar- 
rest, and  he  withdraws  both  from  the  temple  and  the 
city.  His  purpose  in  coming  hither  to  strengthen 
those  who  secretly  believe  on  him,  cannot  be  accom- 
plished in  the  neighborhood  of  Jerusalem,  and  he 
retires  to  the  desert,  away  beyond  Jordan,  drawing 
them  after  him  into  those  profound  solitudes.  It  was 
the  old  familiar  place  where  John  had  first  baptized, 
where  Jesus  had  made  his  desert  home  while  his  Mes- 
sianic consciousness  was  coming  on  with  power,  and 
where,  emerging  from  the  water  at  John's  baptism, 
the  heavens  up  to  the  central  throne,  had  opened 
upon  his  mind.  Hither  he  came  now,  and  abode  for 
some  time  ;  and  how  consecrated  must  the  spot  have 
been  !  And  here  his  own  people  came  to  him,  and 
gathered  around  him  for  those  communings  which 
could  not  be  had  under  the  scowl  of  Jewish  authority. 
John  implies  that  they  continued  for  some  time  in  this 
delightful  intercourse,  in  those  far-off  solitudes.  "  And 
many  came  to  him  who  said,  John,  indeed,  performed 
no  miracle,  but  all  which  John  said  of  this  man  is 
true.  And  many  believed  in  him  there."  ^  They  were 
choice  Sabbatic  hours  where  no  police-officers  were 
watching  in  the  crowd.  It  was  across  the  desert, 
some  twenty-five  miles  from  Jerusalem. 

1  John  X.  40-42. 


FOURTH  VISIT  TO   JERUSALEM.  357 

LAZARUS    DIES   AT   BETHANY. 

But  a  family  of  these  disciples  whom  Jesus  had  left 
Galilee  to  strengthen  and  support,  was  in  affliction. 
Lazarus  was  sick.  The  sisters  know  the  place  of 
Jesus'  retreat,  and  disciples  of  the  neighborhood  of 
Jerusalem  were  going  over  to  Bethabara  and  return- 
ing. By  some  of  these  they  sent  word  to  Jesus,  con- 
fident that  the  news  would  bring  him  at  once  to  the 
friend  whom  he  loved.  He  was  not  ready  to  leave 
his  retirement  at  once,  but  lingered  there  till  after 
Lazarus  had  died. 

It  is  impossible  to  enter  into  this  scene,  if  we  re- 
gard the  "  miracle  "  which  restored  Lazarus,  an  arbi- 
trary display  of  divine  power.  It  is  none  the  less  a 
miracle  for  being  in  accord  through  all  its  processes 
with  the  highest  and  inmost  laws  of  our  human 
nature,  but  whose  action  is  here  sublimed  and  in- 
tensified by  a  love  such  as  never  throbbed  before 
through  the  heart  of  man. 

Bear  in  mind  that  our  knowledge  of  the  process 
of  death  is  for  the  most  part  a  very  superficial  and 
outside  knowledge.  Swedenborg  says,  that  the  final 
extrication  of  our  immortal  being  from  its  mortal 
envelopments,  does  not  generally  take  place  till  the 
third  day  after  death  has  transpired.  That  it  does 
not  take  place  instantaneously,  is  reasonable  in  itself, 
and  facts  are  abundant  which  go  to  prove  it.  We 
ought  to  infer  from  all  the  analogies  and  all  the  divine 


358  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

dealings  with  us,  that  death  is  no  such  change  as  the 
frightened  imaginations  of  our  childhood  have  made 
it ;  that  it  is  not  a  sudden  and  violent  wrenching  of 
the  soul  from  the  clasp  of  the  flesh  to  the  giant  won- 
ders of  eternity.  Not  so  did  we  come  into  this  world ; 
not  so  shall  we  go  out  of  it ;  not  so  are  the  births  of 
nature  when  in  all  her  embryonic  cells  she  feels  the 
troubled  life  that  calls  for  a  new  stage  of  develop- 
ment, when  the  tender  germ  is  breaking  from  its 
capsula  into  bud  and  flower.  Death  is  birth  in  its 
ultimation,  the  final  unclasping  of  the  bands  of 
nature  that  held  us.  There  is  an  interval,  longer  or 
shorter,  between  the  last  streak  of  our  earthly  twilight 
and  the  first  gleam  of  the  new  morning  sky.  We 
know  this,  for  hundreds  have  passed  into  it  without 
touching  finally  the  shore  beyond,  and  come  back  to 
this  natural  life  again.  It  is  longer  or  shorter,  accord- 
ing to  precedent  conditions  physical  and  spiritual. 
It  is  a  total  suspension  of  all  the  voluntary  and  invol- 
untary powers.  It  is  where  our  whole  being  is  bathed 
in  the  most  soothing  of  Lethean  waters.  Instances 
are  reported  where  this  interval  has  been  prolonged 
through  several  days.  In  what  we  call  death  the 
spell  of  total  silence  is  laid  on  all  our  fluttering  pulses, 
lest  any  of  our  struggles  and  outcries  might  hinder 
the  divine  process  of  resurrection.  The  mother's 
caress,  when  she  stills  the  wailings  of  her  infant  on 
her  breast,  represents  but  poorly  the  unequaled  ten- 
derness of  the  Divine  Father  when  He  hushes  his 


FOUKTri  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  359 

babes  to  sleep,  that  their  waking  in  the  air  of  immor- 
tah'ty  may  be  orderly  and  serene. 

It  is  also  true  that  the  process  of  death  is  pro- 
longed and  even  postponed  by  the  clinging  sympa- 
thies of  friends.  This  law  of  sympathy  sometimes 
acts  disastrously,  lengthening  out  the  last  agonies 
when  those  we  love  ought  to  be  given  up  on  their 
part  and  on  ours,  with  an  unreserved  resignation  to 
the  Divine  Will.  That  there  may  be  a  sympathy  so 
divinely  strong  as  to  postpone  the  final  extrication  of 
the  spiritual  body  from  the  natural,  is  certainly  con- 
ceivable under  the  same  law  of  mental  and  spiritual 
action. 

Bear  in  mind,  too,  that  the  sympathies  of  Jesus 
were  so  pervasive  and  strong  that  space  and  dis- 
tance often  vanish,  and  the  sorrows  and  pains  of 
those  who  were  miles  away,  are  drawn  up  into  his 
heart,  and  healing  power  sent  forth  to  restore  them. 
Analogous  cases  have  been  known  where  hearts,  sun- 
dered by  wide  spaces  and  even  by  ocean  waves,  have 
so  throbbed  into  each  other  as  not  only  to  beat  con- 
sciously together,  but  to  impart  some  knowledge  of 
their  mutual  joys  and  sufferings.^  We  get  hereby 
some  dim  intimations  of  what  our  mysterious  nature 
might  be  without  the  clogs  and  limitations  of  sense, 
and  of  what  the  nature  of  Jesus  actually  was  when 
sense  was  becoming  the  transparency  of  the  spirit 
within. 

1  The  case  ot  the  Buckminsters,  lather  and  son,  will  occur  to  somo 
•f  our  readers  in  this  connection. 


36o  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

HE   IS    RAISED   TO   LIFE. 

In  conceiving  the  resurrection  scene  which  now 
follows,  the  English  reader  must  carefully  eliminate 
from  it  the  idea  suggested  by  our  word  "grave." 
The  tombs  in  the  vicinity  of  Jerusalem  were  cham- 
bers excavated  in  the  sides  of  limestone  rocks. 
Around  the  sides  of  the  chamber  were  placed  stone 
tables,  and  back  of  these  were  niches,  or  narrow  cells, 
sunk  farther  into  the  rock.  The  tables  were  first  oc- 
cupied with  the  corpses,  and  when  the  tables  were 
full,  the  bodies  were  laid  away  in  the  cells  beyond. 
We  must  dismiss  the  notion  of  coffins  and  of  our 
modern  funeral  paraphernalia.  The  bodies  were  em- 
balmed, but  the  balming  varied  according  to  the  rank 
or  vanity  of  the  deceased.  The  usual  way  was  to 
anoint  the  body  with  odoriferous  drugs,  and  swathe  it 
with  linen  bands  ;  and  so  prepared,  it  was  laid  tenderly 
away  upon  one  of  the  tables  at  the  side  of  the  sepul- 
chral chamber,  the  door  closed  which  opened  laterally 
into  the  recess,  and  a  stone  rolled  against  it. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  understand  the  resurrec- 
ton  scene  at  the  tomb  of  Lazarus.  The  friendship 
of  a  soul  like  that  of  Jesus,  the  personal  ties  that 
held  others  in  the  embrace  of  his  love,  are  a  most 
essential  element  in  the  interpretation  of  this  whole 
chapter,  —  a  chapter  which  quivers  with  a  pathos,  as 
fresh,  when  we  read  it  now  the  thousandth  time,  as 
if  the  whole  scene  were  enacted  but  yesterday.     We 


FOURTH   VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  36 1 

must  think  of  the  mighty  power,  even  of  our  poor 
human  affection  over  those  who  are  near  to  us  when 
struggling  in  the  grasp  of  death  ;  how  it  holds  them 
in  the  body  and  will  not  let  them  go  ;  how  some- 
times, after  the  eyes  are  closed  and  the  pulses  are  all 
still,  and  the  shroud  has  been  put  on,  affection  will 
hold  them  in  ties  that  cannot  break,  and  in  some 
cases  well  certified,  has .  divined  the  fact  that  the 
spirit  was  still  there,  and  called  it  back  to  life. 
Think,  then,  what  the  power  of  the  Saviour's  love 
must  have  been  when  acting  under  like  conditions ! 
The  miracle  began  two  days  before,  and  it  was  a 
miracle  of  all-knowing  and  all-conquering  sympathy. 
Jesus  was  twenty-five  miles  off  beyond  the  Jordan, 
when  Lazarus  sickened  and  died.  He  was  so  rapt  in 
communings  with  his  followers,  and  so  intent  in  pre- 
paring his  flock  against  the  wolves  that  would  scatter 
them,  that  he  remained  there  two  days  after  the 
afflicted  family  sent  for  him.  But  in  heart  and  spirit 
he  is  at  Bethany  also,  and  knows  the  progress  of  the 
disease  by  those  throbs  and  disturbances,  which  a 
heart  both  great  and  tender,  feels  along  its  hidden 
chords,  and  which  draws  up  the  sufferings  of  others 
into  itself.  How  naturally  he  discerned,  or  rather 
felt  the  hour  when  all  was  over !  "  Our  friend  Laza- 
rus sleepeth  and  I  go  to  wake  him."  He  would  not 
tall  it  death,  for  he  was  still  conscious  that  he  held 
him  in  his  power  and  held  him  to  this  world  in  the 
mighty  embraces  of  his  love,  and  only  for  the  dull 


362  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

perceptions  of  his  disciples  he  says,  "  Lazarus  is 
dead."  When  all  this  is  kept  in  mind,  the  scene  at 
the  tomb  almost  ceases  to  be  a  wonder,  for  it  is 
hardly  strange  that  the  spirit  came  back  to  its  con- 
sciousness in  the  flesh,  when  it  had  been  held  to  this 
world  and  within  its  fleshly  organism  by  sympathies 
so  divinely  strong.  We  cannot  read  patiently  the 
sermons  of  the  commentators  on  the  words  "Jesus 
wept,"  as  if  here  was  something  unaccountable. 
How  perfectly  do  they  bring  him  before  us,  burdened 
with  the  feelings  caused  by  drawing  all  the  pains  and 
sorrows  of  the  family,  and  the  dying  man  into  him- 
self, pent  up  before,  but  now  convulsing  his  breast 
and  brimming  over  in  drops  of  tenderness !  And 
how  entirely  in  keeping  is  the  scene  that  follows, 
which  we  are  let  into  in  a  way  that  no  forger  would 
ever  have  thought  of!  As  the  tenant  of  the  tomb 
rises  from  the  stone  table  on  which  he  had  been 
lying,  and  struggles  with  the  linen  bands  that  im- 
pede his  movements,  and  the  lookers-on  are  fixed  in 
wonder  and  awe  with  no  offer  of  assistance,  Jesus, 
who  alone  was  self-possessed,  says  to  them  with  a 
wave  of  the  hand  toward  Lazarus,  "  Loose  him  and 
let  him  go." 

Then  the  characterization  of  the  narrative  is  so 
plainly  unstudied  and  undesigned  as  to  render  it 
morally  certain  that  the  whole  scene  is  real  and  not 
imaginary.  How  perfectly,  though  incidentally,  are 
the  two  sisters  individualized !     It  is  Mary  and  not 


FOURTH  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  363 

Martha  who  sits  in  the  most  retired  part  of  the 
house,  given  up  to  tender  sorrow,  and  does  not  know 
that  Jesus  is  coming.  It  is  Martha  and  not  Mary, 
still  "  cumbered  with  much  serving,"  who  sees  his  ap- 
proach and  rushes  out  to  meet  him.  One  repeats 
after  the  other,  the  same  words  which  they  must 
have  said  over  and  over  together.  It  is  Martha  and 
not  Mary  who  makes  the  coarse  remark  respecting 
the  state  of  the  body.  Any  forger  or  romancer  could 
have  imagined  a  resurrection  scene,  and  we  have 
abundance  of  them  in  the  legends  of  the  saints.  No 
forger  or  romancer  of  these  times,  or  of  any  times, 
could  have  made  the  central  fact  the  heart  of  a  nar- 
rative like  this,  threading  the  whole  body  of  it  with 
veins  into  which  beats  the  finest  life-blood  of  our 
human  nature. 

A  late  writer  objects  to  the  prayer  at  the  tomb 
as  dramatic,  in  the  clause  "  because  of  the  people 
that  stand  by  I  said  it,  that  they  may  believe  that 
thou  hast  sent  me."  If  it  was  dramatic,  then  all 
prayer  is  except  secret  prayer,  for  all  other  prayer 
is  specially  "for  the  sake  of  the  people  that  stand 
by,"  they  being  supposed  either  to  join  in  it  or  be 
brought  more  directly  under  its  influence.  It  is  to 
be  presumed  that  John  has  here  given  only  the 
summary  of  what  Jesus  prayed  for,  and  which  was 
mainly  for  faith  on  the  part  of  the  people  who  were 
with  him.  His  desire  was  that  they  might  not  stu- 
pidly wonder  at  the  miracle  he  was  about  to  work, 


364  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

but  be  helped  by  it  to  an  apprehension  of  the  Divine 
doctrines  which  he  taught. 

On  a  careful  study  and  review  of  this  resurrection 
scene,  I  want  language  to  express  the  conviction  of 
its  historic  certitude  in  all  its  particulars.  The  nar- 
rative is  beyond  the  highest  reach  of  art,  in  those 
delicate  touches  of  nature  which  are  plainly  uncon- 
scious, and  therefore  the  indelible  marks  of  reality, 
A  forger  would  not  have  brought  Jesus  to  the  grave 
"  weeping,"  nor  would  he  have  described  a  scene  of 
such  thriUing  import  without  betraying  some  effort 
to  be  dramatic,  nor  without  weaving  in  elements  in 
disharmony  with  the  naturalness  and  tenderness  of 
the  scene.  It  is  objected  that  such  a  miracle  as  this 
could  not  possibly  have  been  omitted  by  the  synop- 
tics. The  objection  is  futile.  Whenever  Jesus  ap- 
proached Jerusalem  he  came  under  the  frowns  and 
threatenings  of  the  authorities.  To  come  up  with 
twelve  organized  followers,  would  have  been  madness. 
He  never  did,  except  at  the  fatal  Passover,  foreseen 
and  intended  to  be  the  last.  But  he  knew  how  many 
hearts  and  homes  were  yearning  towards  him  in  ami 
about  Jerusalem,  how  much  they  needed  strength,  and 
how  soon  they  would  need  consolation.  These  more 
private  visitations  give  us  gleams  far  into  the  more 
interior  life  of  Jesus ;  and  whoever  reads  the  fourth 
Gospel  with  care,  must  see  that  they  are  described  by 
an  eye-witness  who  keeps  himself  out  of  sight.  Let 
the  reader  note  carefully  the  time  of  the  resurrection 


FOURTH  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM-  365 

scene  at  Bethany.  Jesus  had  come  up  privately  to 
Jerusalem  for  the  last  time  before  the  fatal  Passover ; 
he  had  escaped  for  his  life  and  gone  over  the  Jordan 
into  the  desert ;  he  had  drawn  after  him  disciples 
from  the  city,  and  was  communing  with  them  there  ; 
he  goes  back  to  Bethany  to  raise  up  his  dead  friend, 
though  against  the  remonstrance  of  those  disciples 
who  fear  he  will  be  arrested  ;  he  leaves  immediately 
after,  and  returns  to  Galilee  by  an  unfrequented  way, 
where  we  find  him  again  with  the  twelve.  It  is  pretty 
certain  that  the  twelve  were  7iot  with  him  at  Bethany ; 
it  is  exceedingly  probable  that  John  would  be  there, 
and  taking  the  whole  evidence,  we  think  it  morally 
certain  that  he  was  there,  and  that  his  pen  has  de- 
scribed the  scene. 

JOHN    INTERLACES   THE   SYNOPTICS. 

We  have  observed  how  constantly  he  supplements 
the  synoptics  and  fits  into  them.  Sometimes  the 
interlacings  are  exceedingly  delicate,  and  where  he 
disagrees  with  them  in  details,  the  disagreements  are 
confirmatory  evidence  of  genuineness.  We  cannot 
avoid  the  conclusion,  that  we  have  an  instance  of  this 
in  the  history  of  the  resurrection  scene  at  Bethany, 
and  one  of  a  very  remarkable  kind.  The  characters 
are  introduced  in  this  way :  — 

"  Now  a  certain  man  was  sick  named  Lazarus  of 
Bethany,  the  town  of  Mary  and  her  sister  Martha." 

Then  we  have  this  explanatory  sentence,  thrown 


366  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

in  parenthetically:  "It  was  the  same  Mary  which 
anointed  the  Lord  with  ointment,  and  wiped  his  feet 
with  her  hair,  whose  brother  Lazarus  was  sick." 

Why  this  reference  to  Mary  as  one  whose  deed  was 
already  famous  ?  We  cannot  mistake  the  prominence 
here  given  to  her.  Martha  is  only  known  as  Mary's 
sister,  and  Lazarus  as  Mary's  brother,  and  she  is 
spoken  of  as  if  her  good  deed  had  somewhere  else 
been  described  without  being  credited  to  her  by 
name.  "  This  Mary  was  the  person  who  anointed  the 
Lord  with  precious  oil."  Turning  to  the  synoptics 
we  find  this  deed  of  tender  friendship  described  by 
Matthew  and  Mark  in  a  strain  of  the  highest  com- 
mendation, with  the  assurance  of  Jesus  that  its  fra- 
grance should  yet  fill  the  whole  world.^  But  the  name 
of  the  woman  thus  highly  praised  is  kept  back,  for 
when  Peter  preached,  and  Mark  and  Matthew  wrote, 
she  was  probably  living.  How  natural  for  John  writ- 
ing later,  when  he  came  to  speak  of  Mary  to  say, 
"This  is  that  person  who  anointed  the  Lord  with 
precious  oil,"  in  tacit  reference  to  the  well-known 
and  remarkable  eulogium  which  the  first  two  evan- 
gelists had  recorded. 

But  this  fragrant  deed  of  Mary,  John  himself  de- 
scribes afterwards ;  and  as  we  are  persuaded,  with  a 
delicate  reference  to  the  narratives  of  Matthew  and 
Mark.  We  have  it  in  the  fourth  Gospel  on  this 
wise:  — 

1  Matt.  xxvi.  6-13.     Mark  xvi.  3-9. 


FOURTH  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  367 

"Then  Jesus  six  days  before  the  Passover  came  to 
Bethany,  where  Lazarus  was  whom  he  had  raised 
from  the  dead.  And  supper  was  made  for  him  there, 
and  Martha  served,  and  Lazarus  was  one  of  those  at 
table  with  him.  Then  Mary,  taking  a  pound  of  puia 
oil  of  spikenard,  very  precious,  anointed  the  feet  of 
Jesus  and  wiped  them  with  her  hair,  and  the  house 
was  filled  with  the  perfume  of  the  oil.  Then  said 
one  of  the  disciples,  Judas  Iscariot,  the  son  of  Simon, 
he  who  was  about  to  betray  him  :  '  Why  was  not  this 
oil  sold  for  three  hundred  denarii,  and  given  to  the 
poor.'  This  he  said,  not  because  he  cared  for  the 
poor,  but  because  he  was  a  thief,  and  had  the  money- 
box and  what  was  put  in  it  was  in  his  hands.  Then 
Jesus  said,  *  Let  her  alone ;  she  has  kept  it  for  the 
day  of  my  burial.  The  poor  ye  have  always  with 
you,  but  me  ye  have  not  always.' "  ^ 

This  is  the  same  scene  which  Matthew  and  Mark 
describe.  The  details  and  the  language  ascribed  to 
the  interlocutors  are  such,  that  it  cannot  possibly  be 
any  other.  The  time  is  the  same,  it  being  just  before 
the  last  Passover,  when  all  the  disciples  attended 
him,  and  when  his  nearing  death  so  filled  his  contem- 
plations, that  the  ointment  had  the  odor  of  the  tomb. 
The  place  is  the  same.  Why  then  has  John  here  de- 
parted from  his  rule,  and  told  over  again  the  story  of 
.fhe  synoptics  ?  Plainly,  because  their  narrative  had 
aaccuracies  which  John  would  naturally  wish  to  set 

1  John  xii.  1-8. 


368  THE   FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

right.  John's  memory  would  be  more  minutely  accu- 
rate than  Peter's  or  Matthew's,  for  John  had  intimate 
relations  with  the  family  at  Bethany ;  had  been  there 
again  and  again  with  Jesus,  while  Peter  and  Matthew 
had  not.  They  tell  us  vaguely  that  it  was  at  the 
house  of  "  one  Simon."  How  fondly  does  John 
recall  the  scene,  in  order  to  name  the  guests  and  put 
in  the  names  of  Lazarus,  Mary,  and  Martha!  But 
Matthew  had  said  "  the  disciples','  and  Mark  still  more 
generally  "  they  "  rebuked  the  woman  for  wasting  the 
ointment,  and  that  it  was  poured  upon  the  head  of 
Jesus.  John  says  with  indignant  accuracy,  that  it 
was  yudas  Iscariot  who  uttered  the  rebuke,  and  that, 
not  because  he  cared  for  the  poor,  but  because  he  was 
a  thief  and  kept  the  money-box,  and  wanted  to  put 
something  into  it ;  thus  exonerating  the  other  dis- 
ciples. He  is  careful  even  to  give  all  the  additions 
of  Judas,  and  make  him  stand  out  from  all  the  rest, 

—  "  the  son  of  Simon,  who  was  about  to  betray  him.'* 
He  also  says  with  more  minuteness  and  as  a  more 
interested  observer,  that  it  was  the  feet  of  Jesus 
which  Mary  balmed,  —  the  feet  of  the  weary  traveller, 

—  and  that  she  wiped  them  with  her  hair,  thus  giving 
to  the  incident  all  its  touching  significance. 

These  corrections  of  the  other  narratives  so  deli- 
cately done  are  indubitable  marks  of  truth  and  genu- 
ineness. No  fabricator  would  have  thought  of  sui>- 
plementing  the  synoptics  in  this  way.  He  would 
have  dealt  in  generalities,  instead  of  going  down  into 


FOURTH  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.  369 

details  which  photograph  the  scene  with  such  sharp- 
ness of  outline  as  to  correct  the  more  vague  and  in- 
accurate statements  of  observers,  who  must  have  wit- 
nessed it  with  an  interest  not  near  so  tender.  He 
would  have  had  no  motive  to  depart  at  all  from  the 
synoptics  in  such  matters  as  these,  but  every  motive 
to  keep  in  harmony  with  them.  But  how  fondly  has 
John  supplied  these  details  in  scenes  over  which  his 
memory  was  brooding,  putting  in  all  the  names  of 
the  dear  family  which  the  others  had  left  out !  And 
while  he  corrects  them  with  sharpened  accuracy  he 
puts  in  the  hated  name  of  Judas  with  a  tone  of  his 
ancient  anger  and  scorn.  The  evidence  is  irresistible, 
because  so  perfectly  artless,  that  the  author  of  the 
fourth  Gospel  is  writing  of  scenes  and  characters 
endeared  and  long  familiar,  and  to  which  Matthew 
and  Peter  were  comparative  strangers. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

FIFTH    AND    LAST    VISIT   AT  JERUSALEM. 

T  T  E  went  back  to  Galilee,  not  publicly,  but  by  way 
-■--'-  of  the  desert,  lingering  for  awhile  at  a  town 
called  Ephraim,  on  the  borders  of  the  desert,  there 
drawing  his  Judaean  disciples  to  him  in  his  last  pri- 
vate ministry.  Returning  again  to  Galilee,  his  inter- 
course with  the  twelve  from  this  time  forward  seems 
toned  with  an  indescribable  pathos  in  a  constant  en- 
deavor to  prepare  their  minds  for  the  impending 
blow.  The  synoptics  describe  the  teachings  and 
events  of  this  interval  with  graphic  detail.  We  have 
them  in  Matthew,  from  chapter  xvi.  to  xx.  28.  Now 
Jesus  speaks  constantly  of  his  death  at  Jerusalem, 
for  he  knows  that  the  plot  there  for  his  destruction 
is  fully  prepared  and  ripened.  Now  occurred  the 
scene  of  the  transfiguration,  which  drew  up  his  most 
intimate  disciples  to  a  vision  of  immortality  and  of 
the  spiritual  body,  which  was  above  the  power  of 
Roman  crucifixion.  Now  were  given  the  most  ur- 
gent lessons  of  self-sacrifice,  to  cutting  off  the  right 
hand  or  plucking  out  the  right  eye,  that  the  spiritual 
body  might  be  kept  whole  and  not  perish  in  hell. 
Now  come  the  most  impressive  rebukes  of  all  their 


FTFl^n  AND  LAST  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.     37 1 

sensuous  ideas  and  ambitions,  telling  them  again  and 
again  that  the  baptism  in  his  kingdom  is  one  of  blood, 
and  the  cup  to  be  drank  is  the  cup  of  trembling.  The 
next  festival  is  that  of  the  Passover.  He  is  going  up 
to  it,  not  privately,  but  with  his  whole  organized 
brnd,  and  he  knows  what  the  result  will  be. 

A  question  will  naturally  arise  here.  Why  did 
Jesus  go  up  this  last  time  to  the  capital,  when  he 
knew  he  was  walking  into  the  jaws  of  death  t  The 
vicarious  theology,  of  course,  has  a  ready  answer; 
but  it  is  too  technical,  and  it  does  not  satisfy  us. 
And  yet  it  is  the  husk  of  a  truth  most  profound 
and  comprehending.  Jesus  might  have  avoided 
this  martyrdom,  but  it  could  only  have  been  by  the 
abandonment  of  his  work,  and  by  escape  from  Pal- 
estine. He  was  no  longer  safe  within  its  borders. 
The  revolution  beginning  in  Galilee  had  rolled  up  to 
Jerusalem,  and  under  it,  pervading  the  minds  of  the 
masses,  till  the  Sanhedrim  felt  that  the  whole  ground 
was  tremulous  beneath  them.  And  yet  it  is  plain, 
from  any  human  point  of  view,  that  the  movement, 
left  to  itself  at  this  stage,  would  soon  have  subsided, 
and  nothing  would  have  come  of  it.  Neither  the 
twelve  nor  the  masses  which  they  had  moved  upon, 
had  as  yet  any  adequate  conceptions  of  its  nature. 
One  of  two  things  was  inevitable  now,  —  failure  or 
martyrdom.  Even  on  the  well-known  principles  of 
human  nature  these  had  become  the  fatal  alternatives. 
Death  at  Jerusalem,  in  the  lowest  view  that  could  be 


372  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

taken  of  it,  was  a  sublime  testimony  to  the  doctrines 
of  self-abnegation  and  sacrifice  which  had  made  up 
the  very  body  and  substance  of  our  Saviour's  dis- 
coursings.  To  escape  out  of  Palestine  would  have 
been  to  turn  them  into  empty  words  ;  to  "  go  up  to 
Jerusalem"  now,  was  to  render  them  fragrant  through 
all  ages  with  the  inspirations  of  a  Life  which  for  the 
first  time  was  to  make  the  most  splendid  visions  of 
moral  perfection  a  fixed  reality  on  the  earth.  There- 
fore when  Peter  remonstrated,  saying,  "This  shall 
not  be  unto  thee,"  Jesus  turned  upon  him  with  what 
seems  at  first  a  sharp  rebuke,  "  Go  from  my  sight, 
thou  Satan !  thou  wouldst  cause  me  to  fall,  for  thou 
carest  not  for  the  purposes  of  God,  but  for  that 
which  pleases  men."  ^ 

But  from  a  point  of  view  vastly  higher  than  this, 
death  had  now  become  an  adamantine  necessity.  He 
had  taught  his  disciples  the  highest  truths  of  heaven, 
but  they  had  entered  scarcely  deeper  than  their 
memories.  Jesus  saw  what  none  of  his  disciples 
could,  that  death  was  only  the  reverse  side  of  resur- 
rection ;  and,  that  accomplished,  he  should  have 
access  to  their  minds  on  the  purely  spiritual  and 
immortal   side,  with  an  influx  of  power  that  would 

1  This,  however,  was  not  a  rebuke  of  Peter,  or  even  addressed  to 
him  Jesus  evidently  felt  a  temptation  assailing  his  own  mind,  sug- 
gested by  Peter's  words,  —  a  temptation  to  avoid  death  and  abandon 
his  cause.  The  words  are  aimed  directly  against  the  tempter,  as  they 
were  in  the  early  scenes  of  temptation,  '*  Get  thee  hence,  Satan,* 
*nd  Peter,  unconscious  of  blame,  is  lost  sight  of. 


FIFTH  AND  LAST  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM,    373 

Stream  through  their  memories  and  thence  through 
their  whole  being,  making  the  truth  which  now  lay 
cold  and  dead  to  burn  like  fire,  and  melt  them  down 
and  purge  their  dross  away.  It  was  necessary, 
then,  that  Jesus  should  now  die,  in  order  that  "  the 
law  might  be  satisfied,"  if  we  mean  by  law  not  an 
abstract  or  arbitrary  rule,  but  those  eternal  principles 
of  being  through  whose  fulfillment  alone  our  fallen 
humanity  could  be  laid  hold  of,  and  renewed,  and 
lifted  up  to  the  Divine  embrace. 

This  interval,  apparently  of  about  three  months, 
seems  to  have  been  passed  in  Galilee  in  these  com- 
munings with  the  twelve,  who  had  accomplished  their 
mission  in  that  province,  and  returned  to  Jesus  with 
its  tidings  for  the  last  time.  Matthew  and  Peter, 
through  Mark,  make  full  reports  of  these  last  months 
in  Galilee,  for  they  were  conspicuous  actors  in  them. 
John  says  nothing  about  them,  for  the  good  reason 
that  they  had  already  been  narrated.  The  Passover 
at  hand,  they  go  up  now  in  company,  and  there  is  no 
longer  any  efibrt  on  the  part  of  Jesus  to  elude  the 
toils  of  his  enemies.  The  hour  has  come,  and  it 
would  be  talking  very  tamely  to  say  that  he  meets  it 
with  courage.  Courage  is  required  when  we  walk 
partly  blindfold  into  danger.  Jesus,  from  his  height 
of  transfiguration  to  which  the  three  disciples  were 
drawn  up  for  an  hour,  but  where  Jesus  was  standing 
serenely  all  the  while,  has  a  forecast  of  the  track  of 
history,  including   his   death   and    resurrection   an  J 


374  ^^'"■^  FOURTH  GOSPEL 

the  destruction  of  the  Jewish  state,  and  the  new 
kingdom  of  God  rising  on  its  ruins  and  radiating  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth.  All  this  was  before  him,  and 
must  account  to  us  for  the  entire  change  of  tone  and 
manner,  now  that  "  the  hour  is  come,"  and  which  are 
a  challenge  flung  down  from  aloft  to  the  authorities 
at  Jerusalem  to  do  their  worst,  and  fulfill  their  hour 
of  darkness. 

The  Passover  festival  took  place  from  four  to  five 
months  after  "  the  Feast  of  Dedication  "  at  which  we 
last  saw  Jesus  in  the  temple,  soon  to  be  driven  from 
it  and  from  the  neighborhood  of  Jerusalem.  Not 
then  was  he  ready  to  die.  His  followers  were  to  be 
strengthened  for  coming  events,  his  organized  twelve 
were  to  be  gathered  around  him  again  in  Galilee  for 
a  similar  purpose.  All  this  has  been  done,  and  Jesus 
makes  ready  to  go  up  to  Jerusalem  openly  and  eat 
the  Passover  with  the  twelve.  They  seem  to  have 
gone,  not  through  the  heart  of  Samaria,  but  through 
the  desert,  or  near  it,  skirting  its  western  border,  and 
entering  Judaea  by  way  of  Jericho.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  journey,  Jesus  took  the  twelve  apart,  telling 
them  explicitly  that  he  was  going  up  for  the  last  time, 
and  was  now  to  be  crucified.  They  fell  behind  him 
in  that  perplexing  dread  produced  partly  by  his  words 
and  partly  by  the  coming  calamity  whose  shadow  al- 
ready involved  them.  Before  reaching  Jerusalem, 
however,  his  way  was  thronged  with  people.  Doctors 
of  the  law  came  to  dispute  with  him.     Mothers  came 


FIFTH  AND  LAST   VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.     375 

with  infants  in  their  arms  to  get  his  blessing  upon 
them,  making  their  way  through  the  ring  of  doctors 
for  this  purpose,  showing  how  deeply  and  fondly  the 
heart  of  the  masses  had  been  stirred,  and  how  it 
throbbed  at  his  approach.  Blind  men  stationed  them- 
selves by  the  way,  and  cried  for  his  healing  power  as 
he  passed.  As  he  neared  Jerusalem,  he  applied  for 
an  ass,  and  rode  upon  it,  probably  to  prevent  the 
crowd  from  thronging  him.^  He  makes  no  effort  to 
repress  the  enthusiasm  which  breaks  spontaneously 
from  the  lower  ranks  of  people,  and  comes  up  around 
him  in  shouts.  They  strew  his  path  with  palm- 
branches,  and  throw  down  their  garments  for  him  to 

1  Strauss  has  this  criticism  on  this  passage,  as  near  as  we  can  quote 
it  from  memory.  Matthew  mistook  the  passage  in  Zechariah,  which 
really  speaks  of  only  one  animal,  and  should  be  rendered,  "  Behold, 
thy  King  cometh  sitting  upon  an  ass,  even  a  colt  the  foal  of  an  ass." 
Matthew  thought  there  were  both  an  ass  and  her  colt  in  the  case,  and 
so  he  makes  the  disciples  bring  two,  and  makes  Jesus  ride  on  both,  — 
showing  that  the  whole  is  a  myth  put  in  to  fill  out  a  Jewish  preconcep- 
tion. The  writers  of  the  second  and  fourth  Gospels,  not  falling  into 
Matthew's  blunder,  mention  only  one  animal,  —  the  colt.  This  is  a 
very  subtle  and  ingenious  criticism.  But  the  author  of  the  first  Gos- 
pel, who  probably  wrote  it  in  Hebrew,  would  be  quite  as  likely  to 
understand  Zechariah,  either  in  the  Hebrew  or  Septuagint  version,  as 
Dr.  Strauss  would.  The  inference  most  natural  to  our  minds  is,  mat 
Matthew  mentions  two  animals  because  he  describes  the  fact  as  Ju 
saiv  it,  albeit  the  prophecy  names  but  one.  They  found  the  colt  with 
the  dam,  and  so  both  were  brought ;  but  as  Jesus  rode  only  one  of  then), 
the  garments  being  placed  upon  the  other,  Mark  and  John  only  men- 
tion the  col^  Matthew  does  not  necessarily  imply  that  Jesus  rode 
both,  and  one  reading  of  Matthew  of  considerable  authority  (^tt'  ahr)iv) 
makes  him  ride  only  one. 


376  THE   FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

ride  over.  Little  children  even  join  in  the  throng, 
and  cry,  "  Hosanna  in  the  highest ! "  and  he  enters 
Jerusalem,  not  as  a  malefactor  under  sentence  of 
death,  but  as  a  hero  returning  from  his  conquests. 
He  must  have  known  what  all  this  portended.  He 
must  have  known  how  these  acclamations  would 
strike  on  the  ears  of  the  ecclesiastical  authorities. 
"  All  the  world  has  gone  after  him,"  they  said.  The 
conclusion,  in  their  logic,  could  not  be  avoided. 

This  entry  of  Jesus  into  Jerusalem,  strikes  us  at 
first  as  having  an  air  of  eccentricity,  and  it  is  just  one 
of  those  incidents  which,  when  narrowly  scanned,  are 
found  in  such  close  and  logical  connection  with  other 
events  and  circumstances,  that  its  first  apparent  sin- 
gularity avouches  its  reality  the  more.  The  evange- 
lists put  it  forward  as  if  it  were  solely  from  a  predeter- 
mination to  fulfill  an  old  prophecy,  but  incidentally 
and  unwittingly  they  disclose  quite  other  reasons, 
and  reasons  which  show  that  it  was  the  wisest  and 
most  natural  thing  which  Jesus  could  have  done.  Re- 
member that  all  Galilee  had  been  deeply  moved,  and 
was  crowding  in  long  procession  after  him  to  the  capi- 
tal. Another  throng  comes  out  from  the  city  to  join 
it.  What  was  the  thought  which  ran  through  the 
crowd  from  mouth  to  mouth  ?  Luke  ha^  indicated  it : 
"  Because  he  was  near  Jerusalem  they  thought  that 
the  kingdom  of  God  would  immediately  appear." 
They  thought  he  would  put  himself  at  the  head  of  his 
followers,  as   the   temporal  Messiah,   commence  his 


FIFTH  AND  LAST  VISIT  TO  JERUSALEM.     I'J'J 

reign  with  Jerusalem  for  his  capital,  and  subdue  the 
world  to  himself  by  miraculous  physical  power.  He 
must  ride,  into  the  city,  or  be  overrun  by  the  throng. 
But  he  chooses  the  humblest  way.  He  comes  not 
with  horses  and  chariots,  but  sends  for  a  beast  of  bur- 
den never  used  in  war.  The  ass,  though  of  more 
spirit  and  mettle  in  Oriental  countries  than  the  one 
which  goes  by  the  same  name  amongst  us,  was  never- 
theless used  only  in  peaceful  industry.  The  act  was 
plainly  intended  to  proclaim  distinctly  to  the  Jewish 
authorities,  and  his  own  followers  as  well,  that  he  was 
no  insurrectionist,  and  that  his  kingdom  was  to 
extend  only  by  peaceful  methods.  He  was  really 
fulfilling  the  prophetic  words  quoted  by  Matthew 
from  Zechariah. 

Why  does  John  repeat  the  story.?  Because  he 
alone  sees  its  connection  with  the  miracle  at  Bethany. 
The  raising  of  Lazarus  some  months  before  must 
have  excited  curiosity  and  wonder  in  and  around 
Jerusalem.  Any  writer  bent  on  making  a  sensation 
with  his  readers,  would  have  enlarged  upon  this,  and 
brought  multitudes  to  see  the  risen  Lazarus,  and  talk 
with  him,  and  see  the  man  who  had  called  him  back 
from  the  tomb.  There  must  have  been  much  of  this 
kind  of  excitement,  supposing  the  event  to  be  real ; 
but  John  gives  us  an  idea  of  it  naively,  and  in  a  few 
lines.  Jesus  enters  Jerusalem  riding  upon  the  ass  ; 
and  John  too  makes  prominent  the  prophecy  which 
was  fulfilled,  charging  himself  and  the  other  disciples 
with  stupidity  for  not  understanding  it  sooner,  while 


378  rilE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

rather  incidentally  he  tells  us  that  a  throng  went  out 
of  the  city  to  meet  the  throng  coming  in,  "  because 
they  had  heard  that  he  performed  this  miracle." 
Thus  while  the  evangelists  make  the  entry  to  Jeru- 
salem appear  like  an  eccentricity  by  their  mystic 
theory  concerning  it,  they  supply  incidents  uncon- 
sciously which  show  its  natural  connections,  and  give 
it  the  indubitable  marks  of  reality. 

It  is  remarkable  that  while  the  synoptics  up  to  this 
time  tell  us  little  or  nothing  of  what  occurred  at  Jeru- 
salem during  the  ministry  of  Jesus,  they  now  become 
very  full,  and  report  minutely  and  with  graphic  power, 
showing  that  while  before  this  they  had  only  been 
eye-witnesses  of  the  work  of  Christ  in  Galilee,  after 
this  they  are  eye-witnesses  of  the  events  at  the  capi- 
tal. All  the  twelve  are  now  there.  John's  narrative 
and  that  of  the  synoptics  now  flow  on  together.  Still 
the  narratives  are  not  parallel.  Though  John  nar- 
rates much  in  common  with  them,  he  is  supplement- 
ing them  all  the  while,  and  introducing  us  to  an  in- 
terior range  of  fact  and  of  experience  to  which  they 
were  partial  or  total  strangers.  Still  the  disciple 
nearest  to  the  Lord  was  a  sharer  of  his  thoughts,  his 
works,  and  his  perils,  to  an  extent  which  they  were 
not ;  and  we  shall  find  that  while  Jesus  now  had  his 
public  work  to  do,  and  his  messages  to  deliver,  among 
which  was  the  denunciation  of  woes  against  the  ene- 
mies of  his  truth,  he  had  also  his  private  and  personal 
ministries,  and  that  they  belonged  to  the  inmost 
ranges  of  his  tenderest  love. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE   NIGHT    OF  THE   LAST   SUPPER.^ 

"\  T  THEN  we  read  of  the  private  communings  of 
^  ^  Jesus  with  his  disciples,  at  the  home  of  the 
sisters  in  Bethany,  or  in  the  depths  of  the  desert  be- 
yond the  Jordan,  or  again  in  the  secluded  places  "  near 
Ephraim,"  the  heart  naturally  yearns  to  be  drawn  into 
the  confidence  of  those  quiet  sabbatic  hours.  What 
did  Jesus  say  to  them  to  strengthen  their  souls  and 
bring  them  out  of  the  shadows  of  doubt,  distress,  and 
fear  which  were  falling  upon  them  from  the  clouds 
which  thickened  and  grew  black  around  them  ?  What 
did  he  say  to  them  to  prepare  them  for  the  impending 
woe  ?  We  know  tolerably  well  what  he  said.  The  top- 
ics of  discourse  at  the  Last  Supper,  in  which  he 
sought  to  draw  his  disciples  upward  towards  the  se- 
rene heights  on  which  he  stood,  must  have  been  those 
which  he  urged  repeatedly  upon  his  followers  in  his 
last  personal  ministry  with  them,  whether  near  Jerusa- 
lem or  in  the  seclusion  of  the  desert.  His  oneness  with 
the  Father  that  they  may  be  one  in  Him,  and  with 
each  other ;  his  promise  of  the  Comforter ;  his  exhorta- 
tions to  steadfastness  as  he  described  the  trials  that 

1  See  the  Appendix  A. 


380  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

awaited  them  ;  his  prayers  to  the  Father  in  those 
states  of  exaltation  in  which  "  the  Son  of  man  was 
glorified,"  that  is,  when  the  Spirit  within  so  irra- 
diated the  whole  outward  man  that  the  body  lay  upon 
the  soul  as  a  garment  of  light ;  his  rebukes  of  all 
personal  ambition  and  rivalry  with  lessons  of  self- 
forgetfulness  and  self-sacrifice  ;  these  are  the  topics 
of  the  strain  at  the  Last  Supper  which  runs  through 
five  consecutive  chapters,  unparalelled  for  its  celestial 
beauty.  John  must  have  heard  it  often,  varied  in  its 
adaptations,  as  he  attended  Jesus  privately  in  those 
personal  ministries  on  the  approach  of  the  final  catas- 
trophe ;  and  this  doubtless  is  another  reason  why  he 
was  the  sole  reporter  of  it.  He  had  heard  it  so  often 
that  it  dwelt  in  his  soul  as  a  strain  of  heavenly  mu- 
sic, one  note  of  which  called  up  all  the  rest. 

In  his  narrative  of  the  tender  scenes  of  the  Last 
Supper,  John  supplements  the  synoptics,  and  in  one 
instance  fits  into  Luke's  account  with  such  delicate 
connections  and  shadings  that  they  become  the 
strongest  of  circumstantial  evidence.  Apart,  there 
are  things  not  easily  understood.  Compare  them,  and 
we  have  the  interblendings  of  a  picture  recognized  at 
once  as  a  perfect  copy  of  nature  and  reality. 

The  washing  of  the  disciples'  feet,  mentioned  by 
John  alone,  seems  in  his  narrative  to  be  ill-timed  and 
out  of  place,  and  a  piece  of  downright  eccentricity. 
Jesus  in  the  midst  of  the  Supper,  rises  from  the  table, 
girds  himself  as  a  menial,  takes  a  basin  of  water,  goes 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  LAST  SUPPER  38 1 

round  and  washes  their  feet,  and  that  done  returns 
to  finish  the  meal.  No  wonder  they  were  surprised, 
and  remonstrated.  Turn  to  Luke,  and  we  find  the 
reason  of  it.  The  disciples  were  engaged  at  table  in 
a  most  unseemly  dispute  of  personal  rivalry,  and  the 
symbolical  act  of  Jesus  was  an  interruption  and  hush- 
ing of  this  noise  of  tongues.  They  were  immediately 
shamed  into  silence  and  humility,  and  it  was  to  the 
state  of  mind  thus  prepared  and  made  receptive  that 
the  discourse  of  those  five  wonderful  chapters  was 
addressed,  immediately  afterward,  and  out  of  which 
the  prayer  must  have  been  breathed :  "  I  in  them 
and  thou  in  me  that  they  may  be  made  perfect  in 
one,  that  the  world  may  believe  that  thou  hast  sent 
me." 

Some  one  has  undertaken  to  criticize  the  prayers 
reported  in  these  chapters,  as  partial  and  lacking  the 
comprehensiveness  of  humanity,  because  Jesus  in- 
cluded principally  his  own  disciples.  "I  am  pray- 
ing for  them ;  I  pray  not  for  the  world."  But  his 
whole  purpose  in  gathering  them  about  him  was  to 
create  an  organism  to  receive  and  embody  his  Spirit, 
and  which  after  he  had  passed  from  sight  should  em- 
body it  with  progressive  power  and  be  the  fulcrum 
on  which  Omnipotence  would  raise  humanity  itself 
to  the  Divine  embrace.  "  As  thou  hast  sent  me  into 
the  world,  so  I  send  them  into  the  world.  Nor  do  I 
pray  for  these  only,  but  for  those  who  may  believe  on 
me  through  their  teaching,  that  they  all  may  be  one, 


382  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

as  thou,  Father,  art  in  me  and  I  in  thee."  Never  was 
prayer  more  comprehending  and  efficacious,  for  it  re- 
quires the  breadth  of  the  world  and  the  remaining 
ages  for  its  fulfillment. 

The  discoursings  and  colloquies  of  these  five  chap- 
ters were  not  all  at  the  Last  Supper.  Chapter  xiv. 
closes  with  the  words,  "  I  shall  not  talk  much  more 
with  you.    The  prince  of  this  world  is  coming,  and  in 

me  he  has  nothing  in  common  with  him Arise, 

let  us  be  going  hence !  "  He  knew  that  the  police  of 
the  Sanhedrim  were  on  his  track,  and  to  prolong  his 
intercourse  with  his  disciples  somewhat  farther  he 
walks  with  them  to  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane.  On 
the  way  the  contents  of  the  three  following  chapters, 
commencing  with  the  beautiful  figure  of  the  Vine 
and  its  Branches,  seem  to  have  been  uttered  famil- 
iarly in  the  ears  of  the  eleven,  with  short  prayers  and 
communings  with  the  Father  as  he  saw  the  great 
crisis  at  hand. 

As  we  come  to  the  closing  scenes,  three  very  gen- 
eral facts  are  most  strikingly  manifest :  that  the  third 
and  fourth  Gospels  give  us  a  whole  congeries  of 
events  running  into  graphic  detail  chromatic  with 
the  inmost  life  of  Jesus,  which  the  first  two  Gospels 
leave  out  altogether  ;  that  John  is  an  eye-witness  of 
what  the  others  were  not,  and  that  Luke  reports 
things  upon  John's  authority. 

The  open  triumphal  entry  into  the  capital,  with 
the  retinue  from  Galilee  shouting  hosannas,  hastened 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  LAST  SUPPER.  383 

the  catastrophe.  But  it  was  finally  precipitated  by 
that  discourse  of  Jesus  in  the  temple  courts,  re- 
ported by  Matthew  alone,  where  members  of  the 
Jewish  priesthood  had  gathered  as  usual  around  him 
to  question  and  cavil.  The  style  of  speech,  on  the 
part  of  Jesus,  is  no  longer  colloquial  and  reserved. 
It  rises  to  sustained  and  continuous  discourse,  and 
though  inspired  with  tones  of  grieving  mercy,  is  never- 
theless the  most  awful  denunciation  that  ever  rang 
on  the  iron  casings  of  the  human  heart  and  con- 
science. As  he  closed  with  the  words,  "  Lo  !  your 
house  is  left  you  deserted  ! "  and  went  out  of  the 
temple,  knowing  he  was  never  to  enter  it  again,  it 
must  have  sounded  like  the  last  sentence  of  doom 
through  its  corridors.  The  quick  determination  of 
the  plot,  the  brutality  and  maddening  rage  at  the  mock 
trial  and  the  crucifixion,  follow  in  natural  sequence, 
but  else  were  hard  to  understand. 

The  scene  in  Gethsemane  is  given  by  each  of  the 
Evangehsts.  But  Luke  and  John  become  minute 
and  graphic  in  the  extreme.  In  the  last  grievous 
temptation,  when  the  flood  of  agony  became  over- 
whelming, they  alone  unveil  to  us  the  inner  sanctu- 
ary.  Luke,  elsewhere  vague,  here  becomes  exact, 
teUing  us  that  in  the  terrible  wrestling,  when  Jesus 
took  the  three  disciples  apart  to  watch  with  him,  he 
had  withdrawn  from  them  "  about  a  stone's  throw  ;  " 
that  is,  he  was  still  within  sight  and  hearing.  He 
alone  describes   the   sweat  falling  thick  and    heavy 


384  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

like  drops  of  gore,  and  the  appearance  of  the  strength- 
ening angel.^  The  contrast  between  the  exaltations 
of  the  Last  Supper,  and  the  abyss  of  woe  in  Geth- 
semane,  is  striking  indeed,  and  it  is  alleged  by  object- 
ors that  other  martyrs  have  exhibited  a  greater  meas- 
ure of  fortitude.  Such  critics  lose  sight  of  the  fact 
that  fortitude  does  not  consist  in  meeting  suffering 
without  sensibility,  but  in  spite  of  it,  and  that  the 
largest  and  the  deepest  natures  rise  the  highest  and 
sink  the  lowest  through  the  ranges  of  bliss  and  woe. 
Susceptibility  to  pain  is  in  exact  proportion  to  the 
wealth,  abundance,  and  fineness  of  the  material  it 
consumes.  An  American  savage  would  meet  death 
by  slow  torture  almost  without  emotion,  because  his 
nature  lies  proximate  to  the  animal  ;  but  he  would 
judge  very  poorly  of  the  anguish  whose  nerves  run 
not  through  the  animal  tissues  alone  but  through  the 
textures  of  a  humanity  so  angelic  and  divine  that  its 
sympathies  drew  up  into  itself  the  sufferings  of  a 
race.  The  alternative  is  now  upon  Jesus  in  more 
awful  force  than  in  the  temptations  of  the  desert,  — 
the  sacrifice  on  the  morrow,  or  escape  out  of  Judaea. 
The  latter  is  still  within  his  choice,  for  the  twelve 
legions  of  angels,  if  invoked,  will  guard  him  invisibly 
through  the  danger  and  out  of  it.     But  the  sacrifice 

1  We  do  not  understand  Luke  to  say  that  the  sweat  itself  was 
blood.  The  word  io-el,  "as  it  were,"  implies  the  contrary,  so  that 
Mr.  Norton's  objection  to  the  passage  vanishes,  for  the  external  evi« 
dence  against  it  is  inconsiderable. 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  LAST  SUPPER.  385 

is  axready  chosen,  and  the  anguish  of  it  is  not  physi- 
cal merely.  It  is  heart-anguish  the  most  terrible,  for 
his  own  people  and  nation  are  to  put  him  to  death, 
whom  he  has  yearned  to  gather  under  the  wings  of 
Mercy,  as  a  bird  gathers  her  brood,  but  whose  sun 
has  now  sunk  behind  the  thunder-clouds  soon  to  go 
down  in  a  sea  of  blood. 

It  is  one  of  the  beneficent  and  compensating  laws 
of  suffering,  that  it  becomes  shorter  as  it  becomes  in- 
tense, and  hastens  the  sufferer  into  the  sweet  refuge 
of  death.  The  death  of  the  cross  was  a  prolonged 
agony  of  days  and  weeks  in  ordinary  cases.  The  rob- 
bers crucified  with  Jesus  were  alive  on  Friday  even- 
ing, and  unless  the  execution  had  been  hastened  by 
other  means,  would  have  lived  much  longer,  whereas 
Jesus  expired  at  the  end  of  three  hours.  It  aston- 
ished the  insensate  soldiers,  even  as  the  agony  in  the 
garden  does  the  commentators  ;  but  both  the  suffer- 
ings of  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  come  under  that 
great  and  merciful  law  which  governs  all  suffering, 
that  Life,  which  is  the  highest  and  most  finely  organ- 
ized, is  most  fiercely  rent  and  lacerated  by  it,  and  for 
that  very  reason  its  organism  soonest  gives  way  and 
refuses  to  be  the  inlet  of  pain,  but  shuts  it  off  through 
the  insensibility  of  death.  The  process  began  in  the 
garden,  where  the  sufferer  exclaimed  as  he  fell  under 
it.  My  soul  is  exceedingly  sorrowful  even  to  the  verge 
iii  death,  —  and  only  three  hours  of  agony  remained 
for  the  cross. 

25 


386  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

It  would  appear  that  while  Jesus  fell  prone  under 
this  load  of  anguish,  only  a  stone's  throw  from  Peter 
James,  and  John,  they  were  heavy  with  sleep.^  This 
should  not  surprise  us  when  we  remember  that  it  was 
now  far  into  the  night.  It  is  not  implied,  however, 
that  none  of  them  were  witnesses  of  this  last  and 
most  overwhelming  of  all  the  Saviour's  temptations. 
The  sleep  seems  to  have  been  fitful  and  broken,  and 
heaviest  on  the  part  of  Peter.  John,  who  describes 
the  scene  most  vividly,  if  Luke's  narrative  be  his, 
entered  most  fully  into  its  meaning,  and  knew  the 
influx  of  Almighty  strength  represented  by  the  help- 
ing angel.  John  alone  tells  us  of  the  awe  which  came 
over  the  minds  of  the  police,  who  at  first  fell  back  as 
Jesus  appeared  before  them,  declining  to  arrest  him 
as  once  before,  till  he  told  them  to  do  so  and  let  his 
disciples  go. 

1  It  will  be  observed,  that  when  Jesus  returns  to  rouse  the  disci- 
ples, he  addresses  Peter  only. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

CALVARY. 

THE  place  of  crucifixion  must  have  been  just 
north  or  northwest  of  Jerusalem,  not  far  beyond 
the  city  walls,  on  one  of  the  mounds  which  rise  up 
from  the  undulating  surface,  and  which  probably  on 
account  of  its  shape  was  called  the  "  Skull."  A  throng 
of  spectators  followed  the  cohort  of  soldiers  who  had 
the  prisoners  in  charge.  Each,  according  to  Roman 
custom,  was  compelled  to  carry  his  own  cross.  While 
the  two  robbers  were  bearing  theirs,  Jesus  fainted 
under  the  burden,  because  the  sufferings  already  en- 
dured had  prostrated  his  strength,  and  the  soldiers 
compelled  a  man  from  the  crowd  to  carry  it  after 
him. 

In  this  crowd  two  classes  of  persons  are  to  be 
distinguished.  There  were  the  enemies  of  Jesus 
whose  rage  was  now  to  be  glutted  in  full.  These 
followed  near  at  hand  and  gathered  close  around  the 
cross,  feasting  their  revenge  upon  sight  of  its  ago- 
nies. But  the  personal  friends  and  disciples  of  Jesus 
followed  afar  off,  keeping  in  sight  but  hovering  at  a 
distance,  probably  on  some  neighboring  mound  that 
commanded   a  view  of  the  scene.      In   this  far-off 


388  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

group  were  friends  which  had  come  from  Galilee 
Among  these  are  four  devout  women,  —  Mary  the 
mother  of  Jesus  ;  Mary  her  sister,  the  wife  of  Cleo- 
pas ;  Salome,  the  mother  of  James  and  John  and  a 
kinswoman  of  these  sisters  ;  and  Mary  of  Magdala. 
Probably  most  of  the  twelve  were  also  in  this  far-oft' 
group.  They  dispersed  and  fled  when  Jesus  was 
arrested,  but  we  infer  are  included  among  the  friends 
now  hovering  cautiously  and  tremblingly  within  dis- 
tant view  of  the  crucifixion.  Close  about  him  Jesus 
sees  only  the  brutal  soldiers,  now  leisurely  sitting  down 
by  the  cross  as  a  guard,  and  the  more  cruel  men  who 
pass  by  with  scoffings  and  gibes.  But  there  is  one 
exception.  John  is  there.  He  was  the  only  one  who 
did  not  "  forsake  and  flee  "  at  the  arrest  in  Gethsem- 
ane,  except  to  follow  close  on  the  heels  of  the  police 
and  come  in  with  them  at  the  mock-trial.  He  was 
in  the  procession  that  kept  close  to  the  soldiers  when 
Jesus  was  led  to  execution,  and  now  he  stands  alone 
under  the  cross  where  the  storm  of  hate  is  fiercest 
raging,  and  he  gives  us  again  an  inside  view  ;  the 
lines  of  light  athwart  the  blackness,  the  undertones 
of  mercy  within  the  storm.  He  alone  of  the  disciples 
hears  the  prayer  of  the  sufferer  :  "  Father,  forgive 
them  for  they  know  not  what  they  are  doing."  We 
do  not  think  this  refers  any  more  to  the  savage  sol- 
diers who  drove  the  nails,  but  could  not  understand 
how  piercing  was  the  torture  they  made,  than  to  the 
men  who  set  them  on,  passing  to  and  fro  with  fiend* 


CALVARY.  389 

ish  glee.  But  Juhn  does  not  long  continue  there  as 
a  solitary  disciple.  Three  persons  of  that  group 
looking  on  afar  off,  break  away  from  it  and  come 
nigh,  drawn  by  the  awful  fascination  of  the  scene. 
These  are  the  mother  of  Jesus  and  her  sister,  the 
former  leaning  upon  the  latter  and  clinging  to  her 
with  maternal  anguish.  The  third  is  one  who  had 
been  healed  of  disease,  Mary  of  Magdala.  She,  too, 
ventures  nigh,  and  all  three  find  their  way  to  the 
cross  and  come  up  and  stand  with  John.  Jesus  looks 
down  upon  them  ;  and  now  follows  the  tender  collo- 
quy in  which  He  commits  his  mother  to  the  care  of 
the  favorite  disciple.  There  are  writers  who  dis- 
credit this  account,  because  they  think  the  women 
could  not  have  endured  such  a  sight.  Strange  that 
any  man  who  ever  had  a  mother  could  write  such  a 
criticism  ;  could  believe  that  one  mother  in  ten  thou- 
sand would  have  kept  afar  off  and  not  come  nigh  for 
the  last  benedictions  and  farewells,  or  could  be  ig- 
norant of  the  fact  that  in  such  hours  as  these  the 
gentlest  natures  are  the  strongest,  and  that  woman's 
affection  is  the  mightiest  power  on  earth,  and  in- 
spires her  courage  after  it  has  failed  from  the  souls 
of  men.  The  alleged  discrepancy  here  between 
John  and  the  synoptics  is  altogether  specious,  for  it 
is  only  another  instance  where  John  interlaces  them 
with  such  touches  of  nature  as  to  make  the  harmony 
more  pervading  and  complete. 

There  is  another  colloquy  at  the  cross,  which  is 


390  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

reported  by  Luke  alone,  but  which,  without  reason- 
able doubt,  comes  originally  from  John,  who  stood  by 
the  cross  and  heard  it.  Two  men  called  "  thieves  " 
were  crucified  with  Jesus,  and  to  one  of  them  Jesus 
gives  the  assurance,  "This  day  shalt  thou  be  with 
me  in  Paradise."  This  passage,  we  think,  has  been 
signally  misinterpreted  ;  and  a  supposed  discrepancy 
has  been  alleged  between  Luke's  (John's)  narrative 
and  Matthew's. 

We  get  a  very  inadequate  notion  of  these  men 
called  "thieves,"  if  we  are  thinking  only  of  those 
who  steal  their  neighbor's  goods  in  peaceful  and 
civilized  communities.  The  word  is  rendered  well 
enough,  though  it  includes,  further,  the  idea  of  rob- 
bery or  violent  seizure  of  the  property  of  another. 
Who  these  men  were,  or  to  what  class  they  belonged, 
there  is  not  much  doubt  from  the  circumstances 
of  the  case.  Josephus  describes  them.  The  Roman 
provinces,  of  which  Judaea  was  one,  were  placed,  as 
we  have  said,  under  proconsuls  and  governors,  whose 
main  object  was  to  gather  a  revenue  from  the  people 
from  which  to  enrich  themselves,  and  then  return  to 
Rome  and  live  in  luxury  and  splendor.  These  exac- 
tions were  sometimes  exceedingly  oppressive,  —  were 
excitements  to  insurrections,  concealments,  and  re- 
prisals. Some  of  the  more  daring  and  reckless  among 
the  oppressed  would  band  together  and  seek  the  fast- 
nesses of  the  mountains.  There  they  would  conceal 
their  goods,  and  thence  issue  by  stealth  and  make 


CALVARY.  391 

reprisals  on  the  power  that  oppressed  them,  —  per- 
haps make  assaults  on  the  unwary  traveller.  They 
sought  the  wild  coverts  of  Palestine,  leading  a  life  of 
irregular  warfare,  always  objects  of  dread  to  the  Ro- 
man governors,  and  subject,  when  arrested,  to  execu- 
tion under  Roman  law.  They  answered  in  part  t») 
the  clans  of  the  Highlands,  the  Dreds  of  the  Great 
Swamp,  or  the  John  Browns  of  our  border  warfare. 
Probably  Barabbas  was  one  of  these  men,  for  whose 
release  in  the  place  of  Jesus  the  Jews  clamored  at  the 
trial.  They  might  include  men  of  a  vast  range  of 
character,  from  the  very  worst  to  men  of  natural  hu- 
manity, pursuing  a  good  end  by  unlawful  means,  and 
roughened  and  made  grim  in  the  irregular  strife. 
They  would  be  very  likely  to  come  from  the  rude 
heathen  population  of  Galilee. 

Two  of  these  men  have  been  arrested,  and  are  to 
be  executed  under  Roman  law.  Amid  the  darkness 
and  convulsion,  Matthew  describes  the  demeanor  of 
both  the  robbers,  —  how,  in  the  frenzy  of  pain,  both 
joined  with  the  Jewish  scoffers,  and  taunted  the  Di- 
vine sufferer  with  the  invitation  to  come  down  from 
the  cross.  But  when  we  open  Luke  and  see  the 
spectacle  from  John's  point  of  view,  a  new  scene 
opens  upon  us,  and  one  of  so  much  moral  beauty 
that  it  flings  a  gleam  of  sunshine  across  the  horrors 
ot  Calvary.  It  is  a  scene  of  penitence,  forgiveness, 
and  triumph  over  death.  One  of  the  malefactors, 
Luke  says,  railed  on  him,  but  the  other  rebuked  him, 


392  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

saying,  "  Dost  thou  not  fear  God,  seeing  thou  art  in 
the  same  condemnation  ;  and  we  justly,  for  we  re- 
ceive the  due  reward  of  our  deeds,  but  this  man  hath 
done  nothing  amiss  ?  " 

On  the  surface  there  is  a  discrepancy  between 
Matthew  and  Luke.  It  is  only  apparent,  and  because 
the  harmony  is  so  profound  and  complete. 

When  the  crucifixion  commenced,  the  two  robbers, 
thinking  Christ  was  a  malefactor,  joined  the  Jewish 
rabble,  and  reviled  him.  Matthew  tells  us  so  much, 
and  leaves  us.  But  John  takes  us  farther  inward. 
The  crucifixion  proceeds  through  the  weary  hours 
from  morning  till  afternoon.  Within  the  sphere  of 
grosser  vision,  within  the  tumult  around  and  the  an- 
guish of  mortality,  one  of  the  malefactors  sees  Christ 
as  he  is,  himself  as  he  is,  hears  him  and  understands 
him,  and  turns  to  him  for  salvation  and  pardon.  How 
all-revealing  is  the  hour  !  —  passed  the  sphere  of  car- 
nal perception,  passed  the  maddening  paroxysms  and 
the  torture  of  the  nails,  passed  the  sound  of  passion 
and  hate  that  were  raging  around  the  cross  into  that 
still  haven  where  all  is  calm  and  clear,  under  the 
nearing  immortality  and  the  subduing  spirit  of  the 
Lord.  In  that  undertone  of  indescribable  tenderness, 
which  few  could  have  heard  who  stood  amid  the  storm 
of  rage  and  the  wagging  of  heads,  he  says,  "  Lord, 
remember  me  when  thou  comest  into  thy  kingdom," 
And  Jesus  replies,  "To-day  shalt  thou  be  with  lae 
in  Paradise." 


CALVARY.  393 

This  narrative  affords  no  ground  for  the  belief  that 
a  prevaiUngly  bad  life  can  terminate  in  a  happy  and 
triumphant  death.  But  the  narrative  does  give  us 
some  prevision  of  the  inversions  of  the  spiritual  world, 
where  judgment  is  not  according  to  appearances,  but 
according  to  intrinsic  realities.  What  a  contrast  have 
we  here  between  this  wild  bandit  from  the  mountains 
and  the  Jewish  Sanhedrim,  which  condemned  and 
crucified  the  Lord  !  —  they  the  most  outwardly  re- 
ligious men,  grace-hardened  in  long  years  of  light 
and  privilege  ;  he  garbed  in  the  grimness  of  strife, 
but  preserving  a  more  honest  heart  and  more  suscep- 
tibility to  the  Divine  mercy  :  they  the  heirs  of  all 
God's  revelations,  whose  light  they  never  followed  ; 
he  the  heir  of  small  light  and  privilege,  following,  very 
possibly,  righteous  ends  by  unlawful  means.  We  get 
some  idea  of  that  state  of  being  to  which  this  tends, 
and  in  which  it  consummates,  where  splendid  exter- 
nals and  grim  and  horrid  coverings  are  both  re- 
moved, and  man's  hidden  and  intrinsic  life  is  brought 
out  and  robed  anew.  How  much  susceptibility  to 
the  Divine  mercy  is  preserved  under  heathen  dark- 
ness, to  be  awakened  under  the  dawning  light  and 
grace  of  immortality,  and  how  much  of  impenitence 
and  inhumanity  have  been  confirmed  under  church 
privilege,  till  the  Divine  grace  rebounds  from  it  as 
from  a  rock  of  flint ! 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE    REAPPEARINGS    OF  JESUS. 

THAT  Jesus  reappeared  to  his  disciples  after  his 
crucifixion,  and  that  his  ministry  was  continued 
to  them  with  tokens  of  yet  more  searching  and  irre- 
sistible power,  we  may  regard  as  the  fundamental  fact 
of  the  New  Testament  history.  The  language  and 
the  very  life-plan  of  Jesus  prophesied  of  his  resurrec- 
tion, and  the  whole  subsequent  history  refers  back  to 
it  and  takes  its  significance  therefrom.  Leave  this 
out  and  the  whole  record  falls  into  an  inexplicable 
jumble  and  loses  its  unity,  and  Christianity,  as  a 
transforming  power  in  human  affairs,  is  a  most  un- 
accountable phenomenon. 

But  it  is  not  strange  that  a  fact  of  such  vast  signifi- 
cance should  have  been  apprehended  by  the  first  dis- 
ciples with  considerable  variations,  and  that  after  a 
short  time  had  elapsed  there  should  have  been  tradi- 
tions and  rumors  concerning  it  which  were  very  im- 
perfect reflections,  if  not  absolute  refractions  of  the 
^reat  reality  itself  It  was  a  fact  partly  natural  and 
.artly  spiritual,  partly  that  is  in  both  worlds,  and  lia- 
ble to  be  misapprehended.  We  should  distinguish 
the  statements  of  eye-witnesses  whose  testimony  is 


THE  REAPPEARINGS  OF  JESUS.  395 

first  hand,  or  nearly  so,  from  those  which  are  plainly 
legendary ;  and  we  should  distinguish  the  pre-ascen- 
sion  appearances,  or  those  of  the  "  forty  days,"  from 
the  post-ascension  which  continued  for  some  time 
afterwards. 

There  are  reasons,  as  we  have  shown  above,  for 
regarding  the  twenty-first  chapter  of  the  fourth  Gos- 
pel as  an  appendix  not  written  by  the  same  hand,  but 
subjoined  after  John's  death. 

We  have  two  other  witnesses  at  first  hand  beside 
John,  —  Matthew  and  Paul.  The  genuine  Mark 
closes  with  the  eighth  verse  of  the  sixteenth  chapter, 
the  last  twelve  verses  having  been  proved  by  the  best 
evidence,  external  and  internal,  to  be  additions  made 
by  a  later  hand.  So  that  the  genuine  Mark  only 
gives  us  the  second-hand  reports  of  the  women. 
Luke  is  a  second-hand  witness,  though  nearly  the 
same  as  first  hand  if,  as  we  believe,  he  writes  fi-om 
John's  authority. 

Paul  testifies  to  a  general  fact  of  the  utmost  signifi- 
cance. According  to  him,  the  reappearings  of  Jesus 
to  his  disciples  were  of  a  very  frequent  and  familiar 
character,  and  a  subject  of  common  remark  with  each 
other.  He  appeared  to  Peter  and  James  individually, 
and  twice  to  the  twelve  together,  as  John  has  related : 
facts  which  Paul  must  have  derived  from  the  Apostles 
themselves  in  his  intercourse  with  them  ;  and  he  ap- 
peared to  five  hundred  brethren  at  once,  most  of 
whom  were  alive  when   he  wrote.     Elsewhere  Paul 


3g6  ^^^'  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

refers  familiarly  to  the  same  general  fact.  Not  long 
after  the  vision  from  whose  overpowering  glory  he 
was  led  blind  into  Damascus,  a  man  came  to  him  on 
an  errand  of  love,  saying  that  Jesus  had  appeared  to 
him  and  given  him  the  message.  Paul  says  nothing 
of  the  women  who  saw  the  angels,  but  appeals  to 
Apostles  and  to  living  men  too  multitudinous  to  call 
by  name.  The  genuineness  of  Paul's  record  the  most 
skeptical  have  never  called  in  question,  and  it  enables 
us  to  understand  why  the  evangelists  have  not  dwelt 
more  at  length  upon  a  fact  which  must  have  been  of 
universal  notoriety  among  the  early  believers  in  Pal- 
estine, and  therefore  did  not  need  repetition. 

Among  all  the  witnesses  at  first  hand  there  is  en- 
tire agreement,  some  supplying  what  others  omit ; 
but  the  general  fact  rises  and  rounds  upward  in  con- 
gruity,  and  in  its  stupendous  import  under  their  blend- 
ing testimony,  both  on  the  natural  and  the  spiritual 
side.  None  of  them  tell  us  that  Jesus  ate  with  his 
disciples  after  his  resurrection.  All  those  accounts 
are  legendary,  and  they  might  easily  date  from  the 
fact  that  he  appeared  to  them,  as  he  most  naturally 
would,  at  those  sacred  social  hours  when  they  ate  to- 
gether with  tender  memorials  of  his  love.  None  of 
them  tell  us  that  they  saw  angels  ;  these  accounts  all 
come  at  second  hand  from  the  women,  and  we  believe 
them  to  have  been  true,  with  just  such  variations  as 
would  be  made  under  the  excitement  of  fear  and  sur- 
prise, and  which  the  evangelists  have  most  faithfully 


THE  REAPPEARINGS  OF  JESUS.  397 

recorded  as  they  heard  them.    All  of  the  accounts  are 

totally  inconsistent  with  the  idea  that  Jesus  rose  in 
the  unchanged  natural  body,  for  then  he  would  have 
lived  over  with  them  the  natural  life  as  Lazarus  did 
with  his  family  at  Bethany  and  been  subject  to  death 
again.i  He  only  appeared  at  intervals  of  time,  never 
to  the  Jews  who  had  crucified  him,  always  to  his 
friends  and  followers  when  their  minds  were  held 
under  a  supernal  influence  and  awe.  But  up  to  the 
time  of  his  ascension  he  appeared  to  them  in  natural 
form,  as  one  who  had  been  crucified,  and  showed  them 
his  hands  and  his  side,  as  if  in  accommodation  to 
their  carnal  conceptions  and  sensuous  faith.  Two  of 
these  reappearings  are  recorded  by  John,  an  addi- 
tional one  by  Matthew ;  all  three  were  to  the  eleven 
assembled  privately  together,  Thomas  only  being  ab- 
sent from  one  of  them.  This  is  the  sum  of  the  direct 
testimony.  Paul  supplies  the  added  information  that 
the  reappearings  were  not  confined  to  the  eleven, 
but  were  vouchsafed  to  multitudes  who  were  living 
when  he  wrote. 

Such  were  the  pre-ascension  appearances.  But 
after  forty  days  and  after  the  ascension,  there  were 
other  reappearings,  and  they  were  made  with  a  more 
overwhelming  power  and  from  amid  insufferable  splen- 

1  We  say  the  unchanged  natural  body  without  denying  that  Jesus 
rose  in  the  natural  body.  What  the  change  is,  from  natural  body  to 
spiritual,  is  a  subject  beyond  our  grasp  till  we  know  better  what  matter 
itself  is.  On  this  point  read  the  chapter  on  the  "  Transparencies  0/ 
Natuie ."  in  Part  IV. 


398  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

dors.  All  the  communications  to  Paul  were  of  this 
kind.  They  were  not  from  one  who  wore  a  body 
which  had  been  crucified,  but  from  a  glory  above  the 
brightness  of  the  sun  at  noon-day.  He  reminds  us 
again  and  again  that  his  intercourse  and  communion 
with  this  glorified  Being  was  so  frequent  and  of  such 
a  nature,  that  he  received  from  him  direct  the  whole 
body  of  Gospel  truth  which  he  was  to  preach,  so  that 
he  had  no  need  to  consult  the  other  Apostles  or  confer 
in  any  way  with  flesh  and  blood.  He  was  their  peer 
as  much  as  he  would  have  been  by  following  Jesus 
through  the  track  of  his  earthly  life.  He  gives  the 
best  evidence  of  what  he  says  in  the  broad  Catholic 
Christianity,  replete  with  the  life  and  inspiration  of 
its  author  which  glows  through  his  pages. 

John's  record  in  the  Apocalypse  is  similar.  The 
post-ascension  appearances  were  from  amid  the  same 
overwhelming  glory  out  of  the  midst  of  which  he 
received  his  message  to  the  constellated  churches. 
The  reappearing  which  Matthew  describes,  though 
not  post-ascension,  was  yet,  as  we  infer,  near  the  close 
of  the  forty  days,  and  as  one  period  was  melting  into 
the  other.  Not  now  as  at  the  first  two  meetings  does 
he  stand  among  them  showing  them  his  wounds. 
He  appears  far  above  them  and  they  fall  on  their 
faces  doubting  and  afraid,  till  he  comes  near  and 
assures  them,  giving  them  his  final  charge  with  the 
declaration,  "  All  power  is  given  me  in  heaven  and 
on  the  earth." 


THE  REAPPEARINGS  OF  JESUS.  399 

Such  is  the  report  of  the  eye-witnesses,  made  with 
some  variations,  but  the  variations  are  mutually  and 
strongly  corroborative.  But  there  is  evidence  of  an- 
other kind.  It  is  the  common  consciousness  of  the 
first  Christian  Church  and  the  first  Christian  age  of 
the  new  Power  moving  upon  human  nature  and  rapidly 
transforming  it,  as  the  risen  Christ,  both  in  his  truth 
and  his  spirit,  was  melting  through  its  depravities  and 
errors.  It  will  not  do  to  ascribe  this  consciousness  to 
fanatical  imagination  and  allow  to  it  no  objective  re- 
ality. Neither  fanatical  imaginations  nor  epileptic 
swoons  change  men  from  the  dominion  of  lust,  ha- 
tred, deceit,  and  demoniacal  passion  to  that  of  love, 
purity,  meekness,  and  the  peace  of  God  ;  and  from  nar- 
row and  selfish  ends  to  the  most  heroic  self-sacrifice  and 
the  highest  moral  energy  the  world  had  ever  known. 
Dreams  and  visions  which  are  generated  of  morbid 
conditions,  and  are  only  subjective,  never  bring  new 
clearness  and  vigor  to  the  wasted  faculties,  never 
evolve  a  more  perfect  manhood  from  under  the  old 
decay.  But  all  this  was  done,  and  it  was  done  with 
tlie  common  consciousness  that  the  risen  and  glori- 
fied Christ  was  in  the  work  as  its  inspiring  life,  and 
again  and  again  was  this  corroborated  by  a  parting 
of  the  clouds,  between  which  he  appeared  to  them 
from  his  nearing  heavens  to  guide  them.  The  in- 
auguration of  a  new  era  of  history  in  connection 
with  this  common  consciousness  is  the  complete 
confirmatory  evidence  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
Christ. 


4O0  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

We  should  apply  our  philosophies  with  great  mod- 
esty and  reserve  to  such  facts  as  are  reported  by  these 
witnesses.  Difficulties  occur.  Deny  the  facts  and 
the  epoch  which  dates  from  them  is  wholly  inexpli- 
cable and  the  greatest  life  ever  lived  on  the  earth  is 
without  unity.  Admit  the  facts  and  there  are  diffi- 
culties still,  but  they  are  of  another  kind.  They  are 
such  as  are  resolvable  into  our  ignorance,  into  our 
crude  and  clumsy  pneumatologies  or  our  very  super- 
ficial knowledge  of  laws  which  are  subtile  and  all 
pervasive,  and  which  we  only  see  as  fragmentary 
now.  Touching  the  resurrection  of  Christ  we  look 
from  below  upward.  We  stand  gazing  into  heaven, 
and  so  we  look  at  the  clouds  on  the  darker  side  ;  when 
we  look  from  heaven  downward  the  same  clouds  will 
be  illumined  wreaths  lying  off  on  the  world  below. 

In  the  death  and  resurrection  of  Christ  the  nat- 
ural body  saw  no  corruption.  In  this  mainly  is  his 
transition  distinguishable  from  ours.  But  there  are 
considerations  connected  with  it  of  vast  significance. 
The  transforming  power  of  our  own  interior  life  over 
the  natural  body  which  is  its  clothing  and  exfigura- 
tion  continues  up  to  the  moment  of  death.  There 
it  ceases,  and  the  immortal  being  must  be  extricated 
from  his  mortal  coverings.  He  has  no  power  to  ex- 
trude them  and  return  them  uncorrupted  to  their  na- 
tive elements  and  so  he  leaves  a  corpse  as  his  legacy 
to  the  earth.  But  the  Life  made  flesh  in  Jesus 
Christ  is  not  to  be  measured  by  the  weak  and  Ian- 


THE  REAPPEARINGS  OF  JESUS.  4OI 

guid  pulses  of  ours.  It  was  nearer  the  infinite  source 
and  was  the  fullness  of  the  Godhead  bodily.  That  a 
Spirit  like  his  should  not  need  extrication  from  the 
bonds  of  death  but  should  rapidly  transform  them 
and  turn  them  by  a  living  process  into  their  native 
ethers,  leaving  no  corpse  to  see  corruption,  is  conso- 
nant with  all  that  is  told  us  of  his  birth,  of  his  Di- 
vine Life  transfiguring  the  natural  form  that  invested 
it  as  that  Life  was  growing  deep  and  full  and  too  re- 
splendent for  its  earthly  foliage. 

What  is  the  change  signified  by  the  ascension  of 
Christ }  A  higher  and  more  perfect  pneumatology 
will  show,  we  doubt  not,  that  death  is  something  very 
different  from  what  our  childish  imaginations  have 
made  it ;  that  there  are  no  breaks  and  chasms  in  our 
continuous  being  ;  that,  therefore,  the  first  condition 
after  death  is  in  some  sort  of  congruity  with  the 
condition  before  death  ;  that  the  spiritual  body 
evolved  from  the  natural  does  not  put  ofi*  at  once 
all  its  natural  appearances  and  adaptations.^  Hence 
the  pre-ascension  appearances  of  the  "  forty  days," 
when  Jesus  showed  his  disciples  his  hands  and  his 
side,  saying,  "  A  spirit  hath  not  flesh  and  bones  as 
ye  see  me  to  have."     But  when  the  Divine  Life  from 

1  Swedenborg  in  his  very  rational  pneumatology  illustrates  this  at 
large,  showing  that  the  changes  from  an  earthly  to  a  heavenly  con- 
dition through  death  are  not  made  by  crossing  over  chasms,  but  by 
the  life  within,  unfolding  in  an  orderly  way  and  robing  itself  anew,  so 
that  the  natural  appearances  just  before  death  and  just  after  may  b« 
similar. 

26 


402  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

within  was  ultimated  in  its  full  power  and  bright- 
ness, all  the  remnants  of  the  natural  life  disap- 
peared, and  Jesus  was  only  ensphered  with  the  ce- 
lestial glories.  And  this  was  the  ascension  of  Christ ! 
Type  and  representation  of  our  own  transition,  if  we 
follow  humbly  through  his  upward  and  radiant  path- 
way !  After  the  ascension  his  disciples  only  saw  him 
in  their  more  heavenly  frames  and  beholdings. 

There  are  those  who  talk  of  intuition  as  the  surest 
and  highest  evidence,  but  who  do  not  seem  to  be 
aware  of  the  application  of  the  truth  which  they  in 
voke.  All  other  intuitions  pale  into  dimness  before 
those  which  attest  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ 
All  other  revelations  of  God  in  humanity  compared 
with  this  are  as  starlight  which  precedes  the  dawn. 
Not  the  vision  of  apostles  alone,  not  the  word  of  eye- 
witnesses on  the  great  morning  and  during  the  "  forty 
days  ; "  but  the  coftsensus  of  Christendom  for  eigh- 
teen hundred  years  is  cumulative  evidence  for  the 
reappearings  of  Jesus.  The  highest  experiences  and 
profoundest  introversions  of  the  purest  and  healthiest 
minds  along  this  whole  track  of  the  centuries  bring 
them  into  correspondency  with  the  risen  and  glori- 
fied Saviour  ;  not  by  open  vision,  but  by  signs  and 
tokens  quite  as  trustworthy.  When  men  have  been 
turned  from  darkness  to  light,  from  the  slavery  of 
lust  and  sin  to  the  joyous  service  of  the  living  God  ; 
when  the  Divine  Voice  has  come  down  upon  the 
stormy  seas  of  passion  in  the  soul  commanding  au- 


THE  REAPPEARINGS  OF  JESUS.  403 

dience,  "  still  as  night  or  summer's  noon-tide  air ; " 
when  all  its  higher  powers  have  been  waked  into 
life ;  faith,  sympathy,  disinterested  love,  tenderness 
towards  God  and  towards  everything  that  breathes  ; 
when  the  peace  has  come  at  last  where  storms  and 
conflicts  are  no  more  ;  it  has  all  been  with  the  pro- 
foundest  consciousness  of  a  risen  Saviour  near  at 
hand,  with  his  assurance,  "  All  power  is  given  me 
both  in  heaven  and  upon  the  earth."  If  the  intui- 
tions of  the  soul  are  to  be  appealed  to,  what  are  its 
shadowy  gropings  compared  with  these  sun-bright 
beholdings  of  so  many  of  the  best  and  healthiest 
minds  through  a  period  of  eighteen  hundred  years  ? 


CHAPTER    Xr. 

THE    PERSON    OF  JESUS    CHRIST. 

THE  four  biographers  of  Jesus  have  given  no  de- 
scription of  his  person,  such  as  his  form,  figure, 
features,  expression  of  countenance,  walk,  gesture, 
tones  of  voice  and  style  of  speech  or  eloquence.  The 
reason  is  partly  that  moral  painting  after  the  modern 
style  was  remote  from  their  thought  and  purpose, 
simple  narrative  being  all  they  aim  at ;  and  there 
was  a  further  reason,  for  the  subject-matter  of  the 
divine  message  so  controlled  and  subordinated  the 
manner  as  to  blend  with  it  and  become  a  part  of  it, 
and  they  never  thought  of  separating  one  from  the 
other. 

In  reading  these  biographies,  however,  it  must  occur 
to  any  one  that  such  things  could  not  have  been 
done  nor  such  words  spoken  in  a  way  comporting 
with  our  ordinary  methods  of  utterance.  There  is  a 
class  of  writers  who,  looking  at  Jesus  only  from  the 
.natural  side,  and  ignoring  or  denying  a  large  portion 
of  the  record,  find  in  him  an  amiable  young  man,  of 
sweet  and  winning  manners,  almost  feminine,  which 
endeared  him  to  his  followers,  and  gained  the  affec- 
tions of  little  children  and  Syrian  maids  ; — a  remark- 


THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.  405 

able  and  promising  youth  cut  off  by  an  untimely 
death.  Herein  they  discern  those  traits  of  moral 
beauty  which  cannot  be  mistaken,  and  which  beam 
forth  along  the  whole  pathway  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
But  let  any  one  take  this  portraiture  as  expressing 
his  entire  character,  and  go  through  his  history  with 
it,  and  he  will  find  a  whole  range  of  facts  which  are 
utterly  inexplicable,  and  that  he  has  not  yet  seen  the 
person  of  Jesus  Christ.  Though  his  biographers 
attempt  no  such  portraiture,  it  comes  of  itself,  and 
gathers  consistence,  clearness,  and  brightness  in  the 
imagination,  as  we  read  their  story.  It  is  that  of 
supernal  power  and  majesty,  always  in  reserve  under 
these  lineaments  of  moral  beauty  and  gentleness. 
This  comes  to  us  from  casual  expressions  which  they 
let  fall  here  and  there,  and  more  yet  from  the  impres- 
sion which  his  person  and  manner  made  upon  their 
minds,  and  the  minds  of  the  multitudes.  We  are  to 
remember  that  they  seldom  understood  the  import 
of  his  doctrine,  while  their  sensibilities  were  stirred 
sometimes  to  their  lowest  depths  ;  and  that  this 
effect,  therefore,  must  be  ascribed  to  the  tone  and 
manner  of  its  utterance.  At  the  close  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount,  crowds  were  struck  with  astonishment 
because  he  taught  as  one  having  authority,  not  as  the 
teachers  of  the  law.  To  get  the  whole  meaning  of 
this,  we  must  reproduce  the  scene  to  ourselves. 
Moses  was  the  supreme  authority  in  all  the  teaching 
of  that  day  ;    as  binding  and  as  sacred  as    if  they 


406  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

heard  it  audibly  from  Mount  Sinai.  Here  is  a  man 
who  quotes  no  precedent,  acknowledges  no  author- 
ity, but  standing  up  before  the  people,  pushes  Moses 
and  all  his  special  code  clean  out  of  the  way,  and 
with  only  the  formula,  "  I  say  unto  you,"  legislates  to 
the  world  from  the  immediate  conceptions  and  reve- 
lations of  his  own  mind.  What  amiable  young  Jew 
could  have  done  this  }  What  man  of  ordinary  pres- 
ence could  have  done  it,  without  raising  a  shout  of 
derision  from  the  multitude }  This  man  did  it  in 
such  wise  as  to  fill  them  with  a  sense  of  wonder. 
And  it  shows  that  they  had  some  vision,  however 
dim,  of  a  moral  power  and  majesty  towering  above 
Sinai  itself 

It  is  no  explanation  of  the  authority  of  Jesus  over 
the  crowds  that  came  to  him,  to  ascribe  it  to  the 
miracles  which  he  wrought.  If  the  miraculous  power 
was  merely  something  adjoined  to  him  as  a  common 
man,  he  would  have  excited  the  same  curiosity  as  the 
wonder-workers  and  jugglers  of  his  day.  His  miracu- 
lous works  were  plainly  the  emanations  of  his  own 
being,  the  forthgoing  of  that  Divine  force  which  gave 
command  to  his  words.  Not  merely  the  works  them- 
selves, but  the  mind  and  grace  beaming  through 
them  so  as  to  determine  their  manner  and  adaptation, 
impressed  the  multitude  and  held  them  as  with  a 
spell.  Hence  people  approach  him  as  one  clothed 
with  royalty.  They  come  "  worshipping,"  that  is, 
bo-wing   in   adoration,  or  they  come  "kneeling,"   or 


THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.  407 

they  come  "falling  at  his  feet,"  or  "trembling  and 
falling  down  to  him."  ^  Remembering  the  air  of  com- 
mand and  authority,  felt  always  in  his  presence,  and 
its  subduing  power  over  the  minds  of  men,  many  pas- 
sages in  his  biography  otherwise  inexplicable  need 
no  explanation,  —  the  money-changers  vacating  the 
tempi  3  courts  at  his  word  ;  the  police  officers  going 
to  arrest  him,  but  cowering  before  him  as  they  come 
into  his  presence  ;  his  walking  unharmed  among  the 
enraged  multitude,  as  at  Nazareth,  where  they  were 
prompted  to  throw  him  down  a  precipice  but  did  not 
dare  to  lay  hands  on  his  person ;  the  fear  and  vacil- 
lation of  Pilate  in  the  palace  at  his  final  examination. 
Often  he  speaks  to  the  people  and  holds  them  by  the 
power  of  his  words  when  it  is  plain  that  his  meaning 
is  quite  above  their  range,  and  that  it  is  the  manner 
not  the  subject-matter  that  amazes  and  even  convinces 
them.  On  the  great  day  of  the  Feast  of  the  Taber- 
nacles, for  instance,  when  they  were  pouring  out 
water  around  the  altar,  Jesus  arrests  the  ceremony, 
standing  above  it  and  calling  aloud,  "  If  any  man 
thirst  let  him  come  unto  me  and  drink."  "  He  that 
believeth  on  me,  out  of  his  breast  shall  flow  rivers  of 
living  water."  Not  a  word  of  this  could  his  hearers 
have  understood  as  to  its  interior  meaning.  But 
many  of  the  crowd  said  to  one  another  on  hearing  it, 
"This   is   certainly   the   Prophet."       "This   is   the 

Matt.  XV.  25,  xvii.  14,  xx.  20  ;  Mark  i.  40,  x.  17  ;  Luke  viii.  41,  47. 


408  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

Christ."     And  his  enemies  present,  and  wishing  td 
arrest  him,  did  not  dare  to  lift  a  hand  against  him. 

Even  after  his  arrest  there  was  a  lingering  fear  in 
the  minds  of  his  enemies,  lest  some  supernatural 
agency  should  take  him  out  of  their  hands,  for  even 
at  the  cross  when  the  drugs  were  brought  to  him  to 
drink,  some  of  them  said,  "  Hold  !  let  us  see  whether 
Elijah  is  coming  to  take  him  down." 

Though  his  biographers  do  not  describe  to  us  the 
expression  of  his  eye  and  countenance,  they  more 
than  intimate  their  efficacy  and  influence.  Some- 
times when  his  hearers  were  astounded  at  his  words 
the  Evangelist  says  he  spake  "  looking  around  "  or 
"  looking  at  them  ; "  or  again,  when  the  cavillers  came 
to  ensnare  him,  he  "  looked  at  them  with  anger  ; " 
or  again,  when  the  young  ruler  came  kneeling  to  him, 
he  loved  him,  "  looking  upon  him,"  —  passages  which 
plainly  imply  that  power  and  grace  went  out  from 
him,  not  merely  in  his  words,  but  in  the  beamings  and 
flashings  of  his  countenance.^ 

In  the  walk  of  Jesus  with  his  disciples,  we  find 
none  of  that  kind  of  intercourse  which  they  had 
with  each  other.  There  is  confidence,  love,  tender- 
ness ;  none  of  that  entire  interchange  of  mind  and 
lighter  sentiment  which  we  find  among  familiars. 
True  they  stand  with  him  on  the  common  ground  of 
Humanity  and  friendship,  but  they  are  conscious  all 

1  Mark  x.  23-27,  iii.  5. 


THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.  4C9 

the  while  of  a  Divine  sphere  of  Being  rising  above 
them  and  beyond  their  sight  and  comprehension,  be- 
neath which  they  are  held  in  mysterious  awe.  This 
feeling  seems  to  have  grown  deeper  and  stronger 
after  his  transfiguration.  It  was  their  sense  of  his 
power  and  majesty,  always  felt  but  never  understood,  I 
which  drew  them  to  him  at  the  first  in  the  bonds  of 
discipleship,  made  them  forsake  their  business  at 
once  and  follow  him,  and  held  their  minds  in  daily 
expectation  that,  in  some  way  unknown  to  themselves, 
he  was  to  break  upon  the  world  as  the  conqueror  of 
the  Roman  power.  No  personal  attractions  or  amia- 
bihty  of  deportment  could  have  thus  wrought  upon 
the  minds  of  the  people ;  no  power  of  working 
miracles  could  have  invested  an  obscure  peasant  of 
Galilee  in  those  attributes  which  so  separated  him 
from  all  other  men  as  to  inspire  a  reverence  and  fear  j 
more  profound  and  pervading  than  any  inspired  by 
the  glare  of  earthly  royalties. 

The  tones  of  voice  in  which  a  man's  words  are 
spoken,  generally  measure  the  extent  and  the  depth 
of  his  moral  power  and  influence.  They  are  the  soul 
of  all  speech.  The  grandest  speech  without  them 
may  fall  frigid  and  powerless,  whereas  truths  which 
had  seemed  commonplace  and  worn  out,  may  be  so 
reinspired  with  them  as  not  only  to  become  new,  but 
pierce  the  soul  with  depths  of  meaning  never  before 
dreamed  of,  and  fill  it  with  tremblings  of  hope  and 
fear.     Tones  can  neither  be  assumed  nor  imitated ; 


4IO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

nor  can  they  be  reported.  Their  power  can  only 
be  represented  by  the  effect  which  they  produce. 
Whitefield's  preaching  which  so  shook  the  crowds 
and  swayed  them,  owed  its  power  primarily  to  the 
tones  that  inspired  it,  for  his  printed  sermons  contain 
nothing  but  the  commonplaces  of  the  received  Chris- 
tianity. 

We  may  faintly  conceive,  but  we  cannot  adequately 
represent  how  truths  new-born  in  such  a  nature  as 
that  of  Jesus  would  be  toned  and  uttered  ;  nay,  how 
the  most  common  and  familiar  speech  of  a  nature  so 
inspired  would  vibrate  through  the  hearts  of  his 
hearers.  If  we  take  into  full  account  this  element  of 
moral  and  spiritual  power,  we  shall  be  saved  a  great 
deal  of  futile  criticism  pertaining  to  the  miracles 
wrought  by  "the  voice  of  the  Son  of  Man."  His 
manner  evidently  was  simple  and  undemonstrative, 
but  the  tones  of  his  voice  searched  the  very  centres 
of  being,  melted  their  frozen  springs  of  life,  and  set 
them  free.  How  careful  the  evangelists  are  to  pre- 
serve the  very  words  he  spoke,  to  which  such  won- 
derful effects  were  traced  ;  rather  how  the  words 
clung  to  the  memory,  and  would  not  go  out  of  it,  and 
though  common  words  were  untranslatable  into  any 
other  language  !  The  little  girl  who  had  expired,  he 
takes  by  the  hand,  with  the  words,  "  Talitha  ciimil' 
and  the  little  girl  came  back  to  life  and  rose  up.  To 
the  deaf  man  he  says,  " Ephatha''  and  his  ears  are 
opened.     These  were    Syriac  words  ;   the  language 


THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.  4II 

spoken  by  our  Saviour  in  his  intercourse  with  men. 
They  were  common  words.  Why  does  the  Evangel- 
ist retain  them  when  writing  in  Greek  ?  Because,  as 
Dr.  Furness  has  said,  "they  were  severed  as  by  a 
stroke  of  Ughtning  from  all  other  words,"  not  merely, 
however,  because  the  disciples  saw  the  effect  which 
they  produced,  but  because  the  tones  in  which  they 
were  uttered  ma.1^  them  untranslatable  ;  tones  which 
so  searched  the  very  life-centres  as  to  touch  the  foun- 
tains of  existence,  and  make  them  flow  with  healing 
power  through  the  physical  frame.  These  tones,  not 
because  of  their  loudness,  but  because  a  divine  com- 
passion more  pervading  and  far-reaching  than  ever 
vibrated  in  a  human  voice  was  thrilling  through  them, 
found  Lazarus  in  his  death-sleep.  Jesus  "  cried  with 
a  loud  voice,"  says  the  Evangelist ;  literally  with  a 
great  voice  (<^ov5  /xcyaAry),  great  because  of  its  power 
to  reach  the  seat  of  consciousness  and  make  the 
frozen  currents  of  life  to  melt  and  start  anew.  And 
in  that  cry  upon  the  cross,  "  Eloi,  Eloi,  lama  sabach- 
thani,"  there  seems  no  other  reason  for  preserving 
the  original  words,  unless  it  be  that  the  tones,  not 
the  words,  shivered  through  the  hearts  of  the  stand- 
ers-by,  and  startled  thern  with  thoughts  of  a  suffering 
that  was  more  than  mortal,  as  if  the  heart  then  break- 
ing had  drawn  into  its  divine  recesses  the  woes  of  a 
whole  race,  which  found  utterance  in  its  expiring 
wail. 
With  these  conceptions  of  the  power  and  majesty 


412  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

of  Jesus,  we  cannot  look  with  satisfaction,  or  even 
patience,  on  those  paintings  and  engravings  designed 
to  represent  his  person,  and  which  are  put  into  so 
many  picture-frames,  and  so  many  "  Lives  of  Christ.'* 
The  features  of  some  of  them  are  feminine,  some  of 
them  Jewish,  all  of  them  the  feeble  conceptions  of 
artists  who  ought  to  keep  their  poor  ideals  out 
of  sight.  The  only  portraiture,  it  seems  to  us,  which 
any  earnest  believer  can  regard  with  satisfaction,  is 
the  one  which  dawns  upon  his  rising  faith  ;  nor  will 
that  satisfy  him  as  anything  which  he  can  fix  and 
frame,  for  it  will  change  as  he  changes,  and  as  the 
Christ  of  consciousness  grows  into  the  image  and 
likeness  of  the  living  God. 


PART  IV. 

THE  JOHANNEAN  THEOLOGY. 


**  It  breathes  the  air  of  peace,  yet  sounds  at  times  like  a  peal  of 
thunder  from  the  other  world ;  it  soars  majestically  like  the  eagle 
towards  the  uncreated  source  of  light,  and  yet  hovers  as  gently  as  a 
dove  over  the  earth  ;  it  is  sublime  as  a  seraph,  yet  simple  as  a  child  ; 
high  and  serene  as  the  heaven,  deep  as  the  unfathomable  sea." 

SCHAFP. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    COSMOLOGY    OF    PLATO. 

npiiF:OLOGY-is  the  knowledge  of  God.  Religion 
-•-  is  that  knowledge  so  used  and  applied,  and  so 
entering  into  human  experience  and  the  personal  life 
that  it  draws  man  to  God  and  binds  him  in  loving 
fealty  to  the  throne.  There  may  be  theology  without 
religion,  for  God  may  be  apprehended  by  the  intellect 
alone,  and  then  the  idea  of  Him  floats  idle  as  a  spec- 
ulation and  is  never  converted  into  conduct.  There 
cannot  be  any  true  religion  without  theology,  for 
where  there  is  no  knowledge  of  God  there  is  either 
atheism  or  blind  superstition.  And  just  in  that  de- 
gree that  the  knowledge  of  the  Divine  becomes  clear 
and  sufficing  is  human  nature  swayed  and  renovated 
by  it  and  drawn  upward  into  the  Divine  communion. 
The  Christology  of  the  New  Testament  and  that 
of  the  fourth  Gospel  preeminently,  has  for  eighteen 
centuries  brought  men  into  conscious  relations  with 
God,  more  filial  and  tender  than  any  other  work  has 
done.  This  undoubtedly  is  the  highest  and  the  ulti- 
mate evidence  both  of  its  authenticity  and  genuine- 
ness ;  for  any  work  which  opens  in  human  nature  the 
deepest  fountains   of  devotion   and  joy  comes  to  it 


4l6  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

with  the  most  authentic  tidings  of  the  divine  nature 
and  name.  But  what  is  to  be  said  if  there  are  very 
good  and  capable  persons,  and  very  keen  critics 
withal,  whom  the  book  does  not  affect  in  this  way  ? 
Why,  there  is  nothing  to  be  said.  But  it  is  an  urgent 
motive  to  study  a  book  with  expectant  minds,  when 
men  like  Clement,  Origen,  Augustine,  Chrysostom, 
Neander,  and  Schleiermacher  have 'found  in  it?  theol- 
ogy the  key-note  of  all  the  harmonies  divine  and 
human,  and  the  open  entrance  to  the  knowledge  and 
fruition  of  God. 

After  all,  however,  let  us  confess  that  none  of  our 
statements  are  likely  to  be  exhaustive.  None  of  our 
creeds  have  crystallized  the  whole  Johannean  theol- 
ogy, or  probably  ever  will.  When  we  have  put  every 
thing  visible  and  tangible  to  us  into  our  formulas, 
there  is  still  a  divine  atmosphere  which  infolds  us, 
and  which  we  breathe  and  live  in  though  unseen, 
and  there  are  clefts  in  the  heavens  still  higher,  sug- 
gesting fields  of  truth  not  yet  open  to  our  gaze. 

The  theology  of  the  New  Testament,  and  of  the 
fourth  Gospel  especially,  took  peculiar  form  and  de- 
termination, because  it  colHded  with  preceding  or  con- 
temporaneous systems  of  belief  There  are  in  the 
New  Testament  traces  of  Platonism,  and  of  systems 
into  which  Platonism  developed,  and  which,  in  the 
time  of  Christ  and  for  more  than  a  century  afterward, 
were  in  constant  flower  and  fruitage.  No  exposition 
of  the  Johannean   theology  can  be   made  tolerably 


THE   COSMOLOGY  OF  PLATO.  417 

intelligible  without  some  clear  apprehension  of  the 
leading  features  of  the  philosophy  and  the  cosmology 
to  which  it  stands  contrasted,  and  which  consciously 
or  not  determined  the  moulds  in  which  it  was  cast. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  reproduce  the  whole  system 
of  Plato  ;  and  the  best  scholars  who  have  attempted 
it  have  found  it  no  easy  task.  It  is  to  be  gathered 
from  the  Platonic  dialogues  whose  interlocutors  con- 
flict with  each  other,  and  which  of  them  are  person- 
ating Plato  himself  it  is  very  difficult  sometimes  to 
decide.  But  two  of  his  latest  and  most  elaborate  pro- 
ductions were  the  "Republic"  and  the  "  Timaeus," 
and  there  is  no  doubt  they  give  us  the  ripened  wis- 
dom of  the  master-mind  of  antiquity.  They  were  writ- 
ten after  he  had  completed  his  travels,  and  gathered 
and  compacted  the  highest  truths  of  the  Grecian  and 
Oriental  philosophies,  and  fused  them  into  a  system 
of  his  own  ;  and  the  workings  of  his  genius  in  their 
reproduction  come  the  nearest  to  divine  inspiration 
of  anything  we  know  of  within  the  compass  of  what 
is  absurdly  called  profane  literature.  True,  he  leaves 
the  inductive  method  and  breaks  away  from  sense 
altogether,  and  his  science  would  provoke  the  derision 
of  any  sophomore ;  but  his  undazzled  imagination 
quickened  by  a  pure  moral  instinct  gives  him  a  vision 
of  divine  truths  which  science  had  groped  after  in 
vain. 

Timasus,  the  chief  speaker  in   the  dialogue  that 
bears  his  name,  is  a  Pythagorean ;  but  he  is  giving 


41 8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  thought  of  Plato  colored  deeply  with  the  Pytha- 
gorean philosophy.  We  may  leave  out  the  physiology, 
as  not  necessary  to  our  purpose.  Its  cosmology  be- 
comes important,  and  with  collateral  lights  of  inter- 
pretation from  the  other  dialogues  is  capable  of  being 
clearly  evolved  and  described.  It  is  the  highest  utter- 
ance that  comes  to  us  from  the  ante-christian  ages, 
and  has  been  called,  not  inaptly,  "  The  Hymn  of  the 
Universe."  It  did  not  claim  to  be  the  absolute  truth, 
but  the  most  rational  probability  which  the  human 
intellect  was  able  to  achieve. 

Three  postulates  are  assumed.  First  a  Demiur- 
gus,  or  divine  artificer.  This  is  not  an  unconscious 
force,  but  a  being  of  personal  attributes.  He  is  the 
Supremely  Good.  But  lest  the  Good  should  be  mis- 
taken for  an  abstract  quality,  or  a  mere  dynamic 
force,  it  is  described  also  as  a  Divine  Intelligence. 
It  is  the  Nous,  or  Supreme  Intellect ;  under  which 
designation  the  Good  is  conceived  as  determined 
by  an  infinite  Reason,  and  so  giving  its  impress 
upon  all  things  where  it  operates,  of  the  highest 
order  and  beauty.  Thus  the  Agathon  and  the  Nous 
are  names  which  are  used  interchangeably.  It  is 
important  to  bear  in  mind  this  two-fold  designation 
and  to  remember  that  in  the  Platonic  hypothesis 
not  the  Good  merely,  but  Intelligence  or  Mind 
was  in  the  beginning  of  things  and  was  the  presid- 
ing and  constructive  force  in  the  architecture  of  the 
universe. 


THE   COSMOLOGY  OF  PLATO.  419 

The  second  postulate  of  the  Platonic  cosmology  is 
the  ideals  or  archetypes,  after  the  model  of  which 
all  things  were  to  be  made.  They  were  co-eternal 
with  the  Demiurgus,  existing  not  within  his  mind  but 
objective  to  it,  apart  in  their  own  heavenly  locality. 
They  were  the  patterns  of  all  beauty  and  perfection. 
They  were  timeless,  for  time  implies  succession  and 
change  ;  but  since  the  archetypes  were  unchangeably 
perfect,  they  had  no  past  and  no  future,  and  so  were 
without  time.  Some  writers,  it  is  true,  have  tried  to 
make  these  ideals  to  exist  only  within  the  divine 
intellect,  its  ideas  or  subjective  states.  Herein  they 
modernize  Plato,  for  he  makes  them  separate  enti- 
ties occupying  their  own  intelligible  world,  no  more 
existing  within  the  divine  mind  than  the  stereotype 
plates  of  the  printer  exist  within  his  mind.  The 
ideals  are  objectively  things  of  the  divine  contem- 
plation though  subject  to  the  divine  control.  They 
correspond  in  some  sort  to  Kant's  things-in-them- 
selves,  —  primal  essences,  that  is,  which  exist  within 
and  beyond  phenomena,  and  which  remain  after  phe- 
nomena have  passed  off  and  left  them  bare.  Only 
Kant  denied  that  we  could  ever  shake  hands  with 
them,  or  know  the  least  about  them  in  this  life,  and 
across  the  gulf  of  phenomena.  Plato,  we  shall  see, 
contrived  wings  on  which  to  cross  the  chasm  and 
soar,  with  his  All-hail,  into  the  midst  of  them. 
These  archetypes  existed  as  both  general  and  spe- 
cial;  as   one   perfect  eternal  whole,  subject   to  no 


420  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

increase  or  diminution,  but  comprehending  in  itself 
all  possibilities  of  class,  order,  genera,  and  species. 

The  third  postulate  of  the  Platonic  cosmology  is 
a  primitive  chaos  which  had  existed  from  the  begin- 
ning. It  is  first  described  as  wild  and  disorderly 
matter,  containing  the  prime  elements  of  earth,  air, 
fire,  and  water,  subject  to  no  beneficent  law,  but  eter- 
nally discordant  and  surging  only  by  indeterminate 
chance.  But  in  the  latter  portion  of  the  Timaeus 
Plato  corrects  himself,  and  renders  this  primitive 
chaos  not  as  visible  and  disorderly  matter,  but  a  wild 
fundamentum  of  existence,  the  womb  of  ^ova^  prima 
matevy  dark  and  evil,  but  still  an  outlying  chaos  of 
indeterminate  chance. 

Such  being  the  postulates  and  antecedent  possi- 
bilities, the  Demiurgus  proceeds  to  the  architecture 
of  the  universe.  He  constructs  the  best  possible 
from  the  material  at  hand.  He  takes  the  eternal 
and  perfect  patterns,  the  ideal  earth,  air,  fire,  and 
water,  and  dips  them  down  into  chaos,  where  they 
become  clothed  in  visible  and  tangible  body,  —  be- 
come material,  earth,  air,  fire,  and  water,  —  and  hence 
arose  this  Cosmos  of  beauty  and  order.  The  whole 
realm  of  ideals  thus  became  incarnate  or  clothed 
upon,  and  so  to  the  primal  chaos  succeeded  the 
vast  system  of  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  with  the  earth 
at  the  centre  of  the  whole.  In  this  constructive 
process  all  the  contents  of  the  primal  chaos  were 
used  up,  so  that  nothing  was  left  outside  to  act  upon 


THE   COSMOLOGY  OF  PLATO.  42 1 

the  new  order  of  things.  The  primal  chaos,  how- 
ever, though  wrought  into  the  Cosmos,  was  never 
entirely  subdued,  but  was  always  a  disturbing  ele- 
ment. The  Demiurgus  did  the  best  he  could  with 
it  by  incarnating  the  ideals  within  it,  but  it  still  re- 
mained an  evil  and  deceptive  covering,  so  that  phe- 
nomena or  sensuous  appearances  are  not  realities, 
but  ever-changing  phantasms,  not  the  perfect  envis- 
agement  of  the  eternal  ideals,  and  therefore  not  the 
ground  of  knowledge  but  of  opinion  only. 

So  the  Cosmos  arose.  But  as  yet  it  was  only  a 
beautiful  corpse.  It  must  have  a  soul  and  be  alive. 
This  soul  the  Demiurgus  proceeded  to  generate.  It 
was  constituted  in  a  threefold  proportion.  It  con- 
sisted of  the  harmonic,  pure  and  simple ;  the  discord- 
ant, pure  and  simple ;  and  the  harmonic  and  discord- 
ant mingled  together.  The  soul  thus  constituted 
he  infused  through  the  Cosmos,  stretching  it  from 
the  centre  through  all  its  remotest  parts,  giving  to 
the  whole  a  communis  sensus  running  throughout  as 
on  living  nerves.  Thus  endowed  the  Cosmos  be- 
came an  animated  being,  though  of  many  members  ; 
a  visible  god,  the  most  beautiful  image  of  the  invis- 
ible, having  the  impress  of  the  Nous,  the  Divine 
Reason  itself  Then  began  its  motions  and  revolu- 
tions and  the  endless  processions  of  Time. 

The  Cosmos  was  constituted  a  perfect  sphere,  and 
with  the  exception  of  the  earth,  which  is  fixed  near 
viie  centre,  it  turns  peipetually  on  an  axis  or  spindle 


422  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

that  passes  through  it,  and  sweeps  round  in  one 
circular  motion  the  planets  and  the  stars,  which  are 
portions  of  it.  But  though  the  Cosmos  itself  was  an 
animated  being  and  a  visible  god,  the  Demiurgus 
constituted  within  it  other  gods,  the  Cosmos  being 
the  genera  of  which  the  others  were  species.  The 
earth,  the  planets,  the  sun  and  moon  and  the  fixed 
stars,  were  endowed  severally  and  specially,  each  with 
a  soul  and  consciousness  of  its  own,  so  that  each  of 
them  became  an  animated  being  eternal  and  divine. 
Let  not  the  reader  be  puzzled  with  this  Platonic 
conception  of  gods  special,  existing  within  another 
god  which  is  generic  and  all-comprehensive.  Plato 
conceived  of  it,  we  presume,  somewhat  as  we  conceive 
the  life  of  the  plant  determined  from  that  of  nature 
in  general,  or  as  we  represent  to  ourselves  angels  and 
men  existing  within  the  all-pervading  Deity,  their 
consciousness  flowering  out  individually  from  one 
broader  and  more  generic,  which  is  the  ground  of 
them  all  and  underlies  them  all. 

The  earth  was  the  first-born  of  these  gods  individ- 
ually constituted ;  was  placed  stationary  at  the  centre 
of  the  Cosmos  to  preside  over  its  axial  motions,  and 
thus  made  the  ruler  of  Night  and  Day.^     Next  were 

1  We  generally  follow  Mr.  Grote's  exposition  of  the  difficult  pas- 
sages in  Plato,  but  here  we  cannot.  It  is  a  question  whether  Plato 
teaches  that  the  earth  rotates  on  a  common  axis  with  the  planets, 
the  sun,  and  the  stars,  that  is,  on  the  spindle  on  which  the  whole 
Cosmos  turns  ;  or  whether  it  is  fixed  at  the  centre  while  the  others 
move  round  it.     Grote  thinks  that  in  the  Platonic  astronomy  it  ro- 


THE  COSMOLOGY  OF  PLATO.  423 

the  fixed  stars  or  stellar  gods,  which  were  placed  on 
the  extreme  circle  of  the  Cosmos ;  and  last,  the  plan- 
etary, which  constitute  our  solar  system  with  its  re- 
volvins:  orbs.  But  in  the  bodies  of  our  solar  and 
planetary  system  the  discordant  soul  was  largely 
infused.  Hence  their  irregular  motions.  Besides 
their  revolution  on  the  cosmic  axis  towards  the 
right,  they  have  a  counter  revolution  of  their  own 
towards  the  left,  though  not  rapid  enough  to  over- 
come the  other  in  which  they  are  always  borne  along. 
But  in  the  sidereal  circle  the  harmonic  soul  inspires 

tates  with  the  rest.  How  then  could  it  be  the  ruler  of  night  and  day, 
since  it  would  always  expose  the  same  hemisphere  to  the  sun,  while 
the  other  hemisphere  would  be  in  perpetual  night  ?  Grote  thinks 
Plato  did  not  see  the  inconsistency.  The  following  is  the  passage 
in  the  Timseus  :  Triv  Sf  Tp6(pov  rifurfpav,  elWoneuTjv  Se  ■n-epl  rhp 
9ih  iravrhs  ttSXov  Terafievov,  <l>v\aKa  Kal  d-q^xtovpylv  uvKrhs  re  Koi  fj/xepar 
iftriKav^craTO,  irpd)Ti/\v  Kol  irpea-^vTdTTjv  9eS>v  B<roi  ivrhs  ovpauov  yeySvaffi. 
"  Then  he  made  the  earth  our  common  nourisher,  which  being  crcnvded 
round  the  axis  which  extends  through  all  things,  is  the  keeper  and 
artificer  of  night  and  day,  as  well  as  the  first  and  eldest  of  the  gods 
that  have  been  generated  in  the  universe." 

Mr.  Grote  understands  elWofxevrjv  to  mean  '* packed  roundy^^  so  2ls 
\o  be  fixed  fast  to  the  axis  and  move  with  it.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
/appose  this.  The  axis  was  like  a  spindle  through  a  series  of  spools, 
•ome  of  which  might  be  stationary  while  the  others  rotate.  But 
IMato  must  be  held  no  way  responsible  for  our  laws  of  gravitation, 
nor  any  of  our  modern  physics.  His  worlds  are  all  gods  alive  and 
conscious,  and  the  earth  is  the  elder  born,  ruling  from  the  centre  like 
tlie  commander  of  an  army,  not  by  physical  laws  but  by  moral,  so 
that  under  this  ruler  they  dispense  night  and  day  by  moving  in 
innjestic  order  and  with  rhythmic  melodies.  Even  the  spindle  at  the 
centre  we  imagine  was  an  ideal  one. 


424  '^^^^   FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

every  motion  ;  hence  the  stars  of  the  upper  firma* 
ment  move  with  the  most  perfect  rhythmic  order, 
discourse  the  most  heavenly  sphere-music,  and  sing 
together  their  everlasting  song. 

Thus  the  gods  were  generated  by  the  Demiurgus, 
the  only  gods  towards  which  Plato  seems  to  have 
had  any  faith  or  reverence.  For  the  polytheism  of 
his  times,  copied  from  Hesiod  and  commonly  re- 
ceived, he  has  evidently  a  profound  contempt,  thinly 
veiled,  however,  and  insinuated  rather  than  expressed, 
as  the  fate  of  Socrates  warned  him  of  the  conse- 
quences. 

Having  formed  the  Cosmos,  and  all  the  stellar  and 
planetary  gods  that  live  within  it  and  make  a  part 
of  it,  the  Demiurgus  next  proceeded  to  the  formation 
of  man.  But  man  was  to  be  mortal ;  therefore  the 
Demiurgus,  who  was  essentially  immortal,  does  not 
create  man  directly  and  in  his  own  name,  but  he 
commits  the  work  to  other  and  inferior  hands.  The 
gods  whom  he  had  formed  are  assembled,  and  to 
them  is  confided  the  construction  of  the  species  next 
below  them.  He  tells  them  that  they  (the  gods) 
will  be  immortal,  not  in  their  own  nature  but  by  his 
appointment ;  that  the  Cosmos,  however,  is  not  com- 
plete ;  that  other  and  lower  races  are  to  be  consti- 
tuted ;  that  he  cannot  undertake  their  construction, 
because  they  would  thereby  be  rendered  immortal  ; 
but  that  they  (the  gods)  are  to  undertake  the  work 
m  imitation  of  the  power  which  had  just  been  excr- 


THE   COSMOLOGY  OF  PLATO.  425 

cised  in  the  formation  of  themselves.  The  Demiur- 
gus  suppHes  an  immortal  element,  to  which  the  gods 
are  to  join  bodily  and  mortal  elements  to  be  drawn 
from  the  body  of  the  Cosmos. 

There  was  a  remnant  left  of  the  cosmical  soul,  an 
over-soul  which   had  not  been  used  up,  but  greatly 
inferior  in  excellence  and  purity.     This  remnant  the 
Demiurgus  compounds  anew,  and  then  divides  and 
distributes  into  a  number  of  souls  equal  to  the  num- 
ber of  the  fixed  stars.     Each   soul   previous   to  its 
mortal  incarnation  was  to  be  sent  to  its  own  con- 
genial star,  there  to  be  carried  round  in  the  cosmic 
revolutions,  and  enjoy  the  contemplation  of  supernal 
wisdom,  and  hear  the  sweet  music  of  the  harmonic 
spheres.     In  this  pre-natal  state  the  destiny  of  each 
soul  in  the  long  future  was  to  be  unrolled  to  it,  the 
mysteries  of  the  universe  explained,  and  the  heavenly 
knowledge  drank  in,  afterwards  to   be  overlaid  and 
buried   under  the   swathings   of  mortality.     In  this 
pre-natal  state  it  was  to  learn  that  at  an  appointed 
hour  it  must  be  joined  with  a  mortal  body,  and  with 
two   inferior  and    mortal   souls  along  with   it ;  that 
it  must  descend  into  this  earthly  incarnation,  be  sub- 
ject to  pleasure  and  pain,  and  fear  and  anger ;  en- 
counter the  irrational  enemies  of  the  lower  souls  and 
the  mortal  body ;  that  these  enemies  must  be  over- 
come and  subdued  as  a  condition  after  death  of  re-  . 
ascending  to   its   native  star.     But   if  it  was  itself 
overcome  and  failed  in  the  combat  it  would  descend 


426  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

after  death  into  lower  conditions  ;  into  the  body  of 
some  inferior  animal,  would  continue  to  sink  into 
lower  and  lower  animal  natures,  until  its  victory  had 
been  achieved.  That  done  and  not  before,  it  could 
reascend  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  supernal  wisdom 
and  the  music  of  the  harmonic  spheres. 

The  gods  having  received  these  instructions,  pro- 
ceeded to  carry  out  this  plan  of  the  Demiurgus.  The 
human  souls  were  first  distributed  each  to  its  con- 
genial star,  and  then  born  into  bodies  which  the  gods 
constructed  from  the  body  of  the  Cosmos,  that  is, 
from  the  four  elements,  of  fire,  air,  earth,  and  water, 
to  be  returned  to  the  Cosmos  again.  But  into  this 
body  they  placed  also  two  mortal  souls,  there  to  be 
the  accompaniment  of  the  immortal  soul  descending 
from  its  star,  and  to  antagonize  it  in  the  combat  of 
life.  The  immortal  soul  they  placed  in  the  head ; 
one  of  the  mortal  souls  they  placed  in  the  thorax,  and 
made  it  the  seat  of  passion,  anger,  and  rage  ;  the  other 
and  still  baser  one  they  placed  below  the  diaphragm, 
and  made  the  seat  of  sensual  and  beastly  appetites. 
Such  in  the  Platonic  philosophy  was  to  be  the  con- 
flict between  the  higher  and  lower  natures  of  man. 

At  birth,  and  for  some  time  afterward,  the  celestial 
nature  —  the  soul  descended  from  its  star,  —  is  com- 
pletely dulled  and  muffled,  and  does  not  report  itself 
in  the  consciousness.  Gradually,  however,  it  makes 
itself  to  be  felt  and  heard  ;  and  when  its  behests  are 
obeyed,  gleams  of  its  pre-natal  condition  and  knowl- 


THE   COSMOLOGY  OF  PLATO.  427 

edge,  and  murmurs  of  the  sphere-melodies  like 
snatches  of  far-off  music,  come  over  the  inward  sense 
and  draw  it  upward.  By  contemplation  of  the  glories 
of  the  Cosmos,  not  through  sight  alone,  but  through 
the  rational  and  immortal  soul,  passion  and  appetite 
are  held  subordinate  and  become  its  lackeys ;  the 
celestial  nature  triumphs  in  the  conflict,  and  the  soul 
reascends  at  death  to  its  congenial  star.  Not  so  if  it 
basely  yields  and  the  battle  goes  against  it.  Then  it 
descends  by  a  series  of  degradations  through  lower 
and  lower  natures,  —  the  Pythagorean  doctrine  of  the 
transmigration  of  souls. 

Plato  reverses  the  steps  of  modern  naturalism.  It 
develops  man  out  of  the  polypus  or  the  oyster 
through  all  the  ascending  grades  of  reptile  and  quad- 
ruped, till  the  human  form  rises  erect  and  looks  into 
the  skies.  Plato  sees  in  all  animal  natures  a  reversed 
and  degraded  human  nature,  where  the  victory  had 
been  lost  in  the  triumph  of  the  mortal  and  bestial 
souls  over  the  celestial,  or  of  sense  over  reason. 
Originally,  at  the  first  formation  of  man,  there  was 
no  division  of  sex.  Pure  manhood  was  the  primitive 
shape  of  our  unfallen  humanity.  But  men  who 
became  cowards  transmigrated  after  death  into  the 
forms  of  women,  and  thereafter  the  race  was  bisex- 
ual. Men  whose  minds  were  only  speculative,  light, 
and  fantastic,  transmigrated  in  the  form  of  birds  that 
flit  through  the  air.  Men  who  became  enslaved  to 
bestial  appetites,  in  whom  the  star-soul  was  overlaid 


428  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

and  lost,  bent  earthward  lower  and  lower,  their  heads 
elongated  downward  till  they  were  prepared  for  the 
bodies  of  quadrupeds,  in  which  they  walk  on  all-fours 
and  look  earthward  and  feed  from  the  ground  alone. 
Some  become  still  more  bestial,  cleave  closer  to  the 
earth  and  become  reptiles.  Those  who  are  buried 
still  deeper  in  sense,  become  too  stupid  to  live  in  air, 
and  transmigrate  as  fishes  of  the  sea,  or  as  oysters 
that  live  in  mud.  Thus  the  range  of  animal  existence 
is  not  an  original  creation.  It  is  man  fallen  from  his 
primitive  state  into  forms  of  degradation  of  remoter 
and  remoter  resemblance  to  the  form  of  his  celestial 
manhood  till  it  is  almost  lost  and  disappears.  It  is 
the  mirror  in  which  man  may  read  in  the  long  and 
ever-darkening  imagery  the  effect  of  the  slavery  of  the 
celestial  nature  to  the  irrational  and  the  bestial. 

This  is  Plato's  Book  of  Genesis.  Its  darker  pages 
he  hurries  over,  charmed  with  its  brighter  ones ;  and 
he  ends  in  a  strain  of  exultation  and  delight :  "  Our 
discourse  about  the  universe  is  ended.  It  has  re- 
ceived its  complement  of  animation,  mortal  and  im- 
mortal ;  it  has  become  greatest,  best,  most  beautiful 
and  most  perfect :  a  visible  animated  Being  compre- 
hending all  things  visible,  a  manifest  God,  the  image 
of  the  cogitable  God ;  this  Uranus,  one  and  only-be- 
gotten." 


CHAPTER  II. 

CHARACTER   AND  INFLUENCE    OF  THE   PLATONIC    COS- 
MOLOGY. 

^TT^HE  Platonic  Cosmology  was  iDrophetic  of  some 
-^  of  the  highest  truths  of  Christianity.  All  the 
Greek  and  oriental  religions  which  had  preceded  it, 
not  grossly  polytheistic,  broke  down  in  materialism, 
pantheism,  or  atheism.  Plato's  system  may  have 
found  its  root  and  stem  among  them,  but  it  rises  out 
of  them  and  above  them  into  a  clear  and  positive 
monotheism.  It  anticipates  the  first  grand  annuncia- 
tion of  the  Christian  revelation,  by  placing  the  Word 
at  the  beginning  and  not  at  the  end  of  creation. 
Reason  and  intelligence  were  coeval  with  primal 
being.  At  the  end  was  the  Word,  says  Pantheism. 
Reason  and  intelligence  are  the  last  evolution  of 
natural  forces,  whose  beginnings  were  unintelligent 
and  unconscious  matter  quick  with  life  at  some  un- 
known centre ;  developing  outward  into  the  various 
forms  of  vegetable  and  animal,  and  last  of  all  develop- 
ing a  human  brain.  This  fine  secretion,  deposited  in 
a  skull,  is  the  last  and  best  organized  essence,  and  out 
of  this  come  reason  and  thought.  Reason  first  ap- 
pears at  the  outermost  limit  of  tlie  Cosmos,  and  flashes 


430  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

forth  as  a  pale  fringe  of  light  on  the  circumference. 
That  is  the  logos  of  pantheism.  And  such  with 
insignificant  variations  were  the  antecedent  Greek 
Cosmologies,  not  polytheistic,  from  Thales  to  Plato. 
The  only  apparent  exception  is  found  in  Anaxagoras 
and  this  is  hardly  more  than  apparent,  for  the  Nous, 
says  Mr.  Grote,  which  figures  in  his  philosophy,  scarce- 
ly rises  above  the  rank  of  material  agencies. 

In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  says  the  cosmology 
of  Plato,  postulating  the  prime  truth  of  the  highest 
theism.  The  Nous,  or  Divine  Reason,  was  at  the 
origin  of  things.  It  preceded  all  development,  pre- 
sided over  it  and  gave  to  the  Cosmos  its  own  divine 
beauty  and  order.  His  system  clears  itself  alike  of 
polytheism  and  pantheism.  He  sees  the  infinite 
mind  in  its  unity ;  differenced  from  the  universe,  yet 
ruling  over  it  and  through  it  and  constructing  all  its 
forms  after  the  patterns  of  the  supreme  perfection. 
Except  in  the  Mosaic  writings  there  was  no  higher 
and  purer  theism. 

Plato  does  not  grasp  the  Christian  doctrine  of  Prov- 
idence, but  he  approximates  and  foreshadows  it. 
The  Cosmos  is  all  alive.  The  smallest  part  is  related 
to  every  other  part  and  to  the  whole.  It  has  a  con- 
scious soul  that  pervades  every  atom,  and  brings 
tidings  from  its  outmost  limit  to  its  centre.  The 
smallest  star,  as  it  goes  round  in  its  radiant  cir- 
cle, adores  its  Maker,  and  like  an  angel  sings.  The 
highest  soarings  of  modern  poetry,  in  Plato,  are  sober 


THE  PLATONIC  COSMOLOGY.  43 1 

prose.  What  in  Shakespeare  and  Coleridge  are  mo- 
mentary flights  of  imagination,  in  Plato  are  symmetri- 
cal truths  wrought  by  splendid  mosaic  in  a  system  of 
the  universe.  The  mere  scientist  can  afford  to  laugh 
over  the  Platonic  physiology  and  astronomy  ;  but  his 
analysis  accomplished,  dead  matter  is  all  which  he 
has  left.  He  cannot  join  the  severed  members  again 
so  as  to  make  a  living  whole.  He  is  like  the  boy 
who  hacks  the  bird  in  pieces,  but  thereby  loses  its 
warble  forever.  Plato,  with  all  his  mistakes  of  anal- 
ysis, more  than  atones  for  them  in  his  majestic 
synthesis,  which  gives  us  not  a  dead  but  a  living 
universe. 

His  doctrine  of  human  nature  on  one  side  is  not 
only  beautiful  but  divinely  true.  The  immortal  soul 
that  is  in  man  opens  by  an  internal  way  towards  the 
soul  of  the  Cosmos,  and  through  that  towards  its  di- 
vine Maker.  It  never  loses  the  first  imprints  of  the 
supreme  perfection  stamped  upon  it  from  the  ideals. 
They  may  be  obscured  and  overlaid  by  mortality  and 
corruption ;  they  may  recede  from  the  consciousness 
altogether,  but  they  are  never  lost.  Some  day  they 
iaay  come  out  again  in  radiant  outline.  Some  day 
the  star-music  of  a  pre-existent  state  may  wake  in  the 
soul  its  sweetest  memories,  and  breathe  through  it  the 
lost  harmonies  again.  Even  on  its  downward  course 
through  the  animal  degradations,  it  is  possibly  career- 
ing towards  its  aphelion,  where  it  may  turn  and  on  a 
brightening  pathway  regain  the  heaven  it  started  from. 


432  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Plato's  doctrine  of  the  animal  kingdom,  though  false 
in  form,  has  yet  substantial  truths,  truths  which  even 
under  the  light  of  the  Christian  revelation  sometimes 
get  loosed  from  our  grasp.  The  meanest  animal  has 
not  an  isolated  and  altogether  forlorn  existence.  The 
brutes  are  kith  and  kin  to  the  human  beings  that 
rule  over  them.  They  are  not  original  creations,  but 
the  outcome  of  our  fallen  humanity  in  lower  forms. 
They  reflect  back  upon  us  its  woes  and  sorrows,  and 
touch  a  chord  of  tenderness,  like  the  human  grove  in 
Dante's  hell,  which  must  not  be  rent  too  rudely.  At 
the  same  time  they  hold  up  to  man  the  mirror  in 
which  he  sees,  in  the  long  and  ever  darkening  per- 
spective, the  penalties  of  subordinating  his  higher 
nature  to  the  lower,  and  suffering  the  celestial  soul 
to  be  trodden  down  out  of  sight  under  cruel  passions 
or  swinish  appetites. 

The  defects  and  the  inhering  vice  of  the  system 
seen  under  the  light  of  Christianity  must  already  be 
obvious  to  the  reader.  Its  dualism  works  mischief 
from  centre  to  circumference,  and  is  destructive  of 
any  real  unity  between  God,  the  world,  and  humanity. 
The  divine  Nous  was  not  alone  in  the  beginning. 
An  outlying  chaos  was  also  in  the  beginning ;  a  vA-7 
of  disorder,  essentially  evil,  coeval  with  God  and  co- 
eternal.  This  with  the  ideals  is  the  material  already 
at  hand  out  of  which  the  Demiurgus  must  build  the 
universe.  Hence  he  is  never  a  creator  but  only  an 
architect.     He  builds  as  best  he  can,  but  some   of 


THE  PLATONIC  COSMOLOGY.  433 

his  material  is  bad  and  continues  bad  when  wrought 
into  the  building,  an  element  of  unsoundness  and 
destruction.  Matter,  the  element  drawn  from  the  vAt?, 
is  essentially  evil,  but  forms  the  outward  body  and 
enrobement  of  the  visible  Cosmos  and  all  which  it 
contains.  Though  compelled  to  an  external  and  ap- 
parent order,  it  is  the  corrupt  and  poisonous  garment 
of  the  soul  and  the  lying  element  in  all  material  phe- 
nomena. Hence  nothing  is  as  it  seems  to  be.  Exter- 
nal nature  only  presents  to  us  a  troop  of  apparitions, 
always  coming  and  vanishing,  but  giving  no  solid 
foundation  for  human  knowledge.  The  perfect  ideals 
are  behind  them  and  in  them  as  their  soul  and 
essence,  but  they  get  no  adequate  expression  or  in- 
carnation. The  Nous,  or  Divine  Mind,  is  in  first 
things,  but  never  in  last.  He  is  the  Alpha  but  never 
the  Omega  ;  in  the  beginning  but  never  in  the  ulti- 
mation.  God  is  at  the  centre,  but  the  hylic  covering 
of  matter  is  on  the  circumference,  —  the  evil  garment 
in  which  all  essences  are  enveloped.  Hence  there 
is  no  pathway  through  Nature  up  to  God.  The 
universe  can  never  be  known  through  the  senses. 
The  immortal  soul  in  man  must  ascend  by  an  internal 
way  to  the  soul  of  the  Cosmos,  quitting  sense  as 
much  as  possible,  which  is  always  dragging  it  towards 
the  brute  and  the  reptile.  The  Demiurgus  affords 
no  direct  access  to  himself  from  his  human  subjects, 
but  one  indirect  and  circuitous  through  the  Cos- 
mos, —  his  first  and  best  image  and  manifestation. 
28 


434  ^^^^  FOUR  TIT  GOSPEL. 

In  the  Platonic  philosophy  sin  is  not  an  intrinsic, 
but  an  extrinsic  evil.  It  comes  from  without,  not 
from  within.  It  belongs  to  the  sensuous  coat,  which 
the  soul,  descending  from  its  native  star,  is  compelled 
to  put  on  and  wear  through  its  earthly  existence. 
Moral  evil  is  removed  not  by  an  inward  divine  cleans- 
ing, but  by  being  shelled  off  through  the  long  and 
dreary  process  of  transmigration.  Why  the  soul  was 
not  kept  in  its  native  star,  there  to  move  through  its 
celestial  circle  forever,  instead  of  being  muffled  and 
smothered  in  these  poisonous  coverings,  Plato  does 
not  tell  us,  for  it  was  evidently  an  ugly  mystery  in 
his  own  contemplations. 

Since  the  Platonic  theology  does  not  bring  man 
into  direct  relations  with  God,  it  could  not  search  the 
deeper  mysteries  of  human  nature,  and  reveal  them 
to  its  own  consciousness.  This  is  nowhere  more 
manifest  than  in  Plato's  estimate  of  woman.  The 
feminine  element  in  humanity,  which  is  the  interior, 
higher,  and  more  divine,  Plato  makes  exterior,  lower, 
and  more  bestial.  The  masculine  element,  which  is 
exterior,  coarser,  and  lower  down,  he  makes  first 
and  highest.  By  this  indecent  inversion  of  the  two 
essentials  of  humanity  he  makes  woman  only  a 
degradation  of  the  species,  a  connecting  link  between 
man  and  the  animals,  drawing  him  down  towards  the 
reptiles,  not  between  men  and  gods,  drawing  him 
upwards  towards  the  celestial  abodes. 

Platonism  could  be  a  religion  for  the  philosophic 


THE  PLATONIC  COSMOLOGY.  435 

and  contemplative  few,  but  offered  no  boon  to  the 
toiling  multitude  buried  under  hylic  coverings  too 
deep  to  become  conscious  of  their  celestial  lineage. 
The  parting  of  the  ways  right  and  left  satisfied  no 
principle  of  divine  justice,  for  on  the  right  were  only 
a  few  men  of  aesthetic  culture  and  civil  and  social 
privilege,  who  drawing  inward  and  upward  from  all 
mundane  things  and  all  sensuous  influence  sought 
communion  with  the  soul  of  the  Cosmos  and  thereby 
found  pictured  within  them  the  ideals  of  the  First 
Perfect  and  First  Fair ;  while  on  the  left  were  the 
mass  of  mankind  immersed  in  sense  and  in  affairs 
on  their  way  downward  through  the  dreary  road  of 
transmigration.  The  inevitable  result  of  the  Platonic 
cultus  was  ascetic  communions,  separated  from  the 
world  to  the  solitary  and  lazy  intuitions  of  their  own 
souls. 

It  had  a  twofold  development,  in  both  directions 
sinking  down  from  the  high  level  of  Plato.  In  one 
direction  it  sank  to  the  Nihilism  of  the  New  Acad- 
emy.^ In  the  other  direction  it  sank  into  Gnosticism, 
which  was  only  saved  from  Nihilism  by  coming  in 
contact  with  the  Jewish  and  Christian  religions,  which 
it  sought  to  take  up  and  transform  in  its  omnivorous 
receptivity.  It  furnished  Gnosticism  with  the  prime 
material  out  of  which  all  its  systems  arose  and  flour- 
ished. We  have  already  displayed  the  outUne  of 
these  systems.     In  the  i^resent  chapter  we  will  show 

1  See  Part  I.,  chapter  viii. 


436  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  historic  connection  between  them  and  Chiistian- 
ity,  and  especially  with  the  Johannean  theology  as 
formulated  in  the  fourth  Gospel. 

Alexandria  in  Egypt,  at  the  advent  of  Christ,  was 
next  after  Rome  the  most  flourishing  city  in  the 
Roman  Empire.  It  was  the  centre  of  commercial  in- 
tercourse between  the  east  and  the  west.  Moreover, 
it  was  the  centre  whence  learning  and  philosophy 
were  diffused  throughout  the  then  civilized  world. 
Its  population  was  largely  composed  of  Jews  and 
Greeks,  not  the  Jews  of  a  despised  race,  as  they  subse- 
quently became,  but  a  people  distinguished  for  wealth, 
learning,  and  refinement.  Philo,  writing  at  or  near 
the  Christian  era,  says  that  two  out  of  the  five  divis- 
ions of  the  city  were  occupied  by  Jews ;  and  that  in 
Alexandria  and  the  other  cities  of  Egypt  they  num- 
bered one  million  inhabitants.  The  Greek  language 
had  become  the  language  both  of  learning  and  com- 
merce, and  was  spoken  in  the  principal  cities  of  the 
east  and  the  west.  It  was  the  language  of  Alexandria, 
and  opened  to  the  Jewish  population  the  treasures  of 
Greek  literature.  The  city  became  a  second  Athens, 
from  whose  schools  and  libraries  the  Greek  philos- 
ophy had  a  vastly  wider  reach  and  influence  than  in 
the  times  of  Plato  four  hundred  years  before.  Here 
Plato  lived  again,  and  for  more  than  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  had  been  moulding  the  thought  of  the 
most  enlightened  and  contemplative  minds.  His 
works  were  studied  and  commented  upon  as  a  divine 


THE  PLATONIC  COSMOLOGY.  437 

fountain  of  truth.     His   language   became   the  lan- 
guage of  the  Jewish  Scriptures  in  the  famous  Sep- 
tuagint  version,  and  it  was  the  language  of  worship 
in    the   synagogues    of  Alexandria.     Jewish  writers 
endeavored  to  adapt  Judaism  to  the  Greek  mind  by 
making  Moses  talk  Uke  Plato.     They  imported  the 
Genesis  of  the  Timaeus  into  that  of  the  Pentateuch, 
and  then  charged  Plato  with  borrowing  from  Moses. 
Philo  breaks  away  from  the  rugged  and  narrow  liter- 
alism of  Judaism  by  assuming  that  the  letter,  like  the 
hyHc  covering  of  the  Platonic  cosmology,  is  only  for 
ignorant   and  sensuous    men,  who  can  only  be  gov- 
erned  through  their  fears ;    that  God  is  far  within 
and  above,  whose  true  sons  find  Him  by  an  internal 
road  away  from  the  letter  and  from  sense  into  the 
heart  of  the  Divine  love.     There  are  two  Jehovahs, 
he  says  in  the  Old  Testament ;  one  of  them  is  pre- 
sented as  a  man  with  human  form  and  passions  as  the 
governor  of  ignorant  masses  ;  the  other  is  not  a  man, 
and  is  only  to  be  known   by  the  wise  and  virtuous 
few.     The  Logos,  or  Creative  Word  of  the  Jewish 
Scriptures,  he  subordinates  to  the  Supreme    Deity. 
He  calls  it  a  second  god,  king,  angel,  high-priest,  first- 
born son  of  the  Highest,  and  to  this  sub-deity  he 
ascribes  the  creation  of  the  visible  universe  and  the 
promulgation  of  the  law  from  Mount  Sinai.     In  this 
Logos  he  says  the  ideals,  or  patterns  of  visible  things, 
preexisted,  a  perfect  intelligible  world    from    which 
the  visible  was  copied  out.     We  agree  entirely  with 


438  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

Mosheim  and  Dorner  that  Philo  in  his  own  thought 
did  not  herein  make  the  Logos  a  second  person  in  the 
Godhead,  and  that  he  only  lugged  in  Plato  and  made 
Moses  talk  like  him  as  much  as  possible  in  order  to 
recommend  Judaism  to  the  Greek  mind.  But  tlie 
Jewish  Hellenizers  went  farther  than  Philo.  The  dual- 
ism of  Plato  they  imported  completely  into  Judaism. 
The  Jehovah  of  the  Old  Testament  was  not  the 
Supreme  God  at  all.  Philo's  rhetoric  hardens  into 
dogma.  The  all-pure  and  perfect  one  did  not  create 
this  bad  world,  and  never  comes  in  contact  with  it. 
The  Word  which  created  the  world  and  governs  it 
was  only  one  of  his  angels.  In  this  milder  form  of 
Gnosticism  we  have  Plato's  dualism  over  again  with 
very  insignificant  modifications. 

The  development  did  not  stop  here.  Platonism,  by 
borrowing  an  element  from  the  Parsee  religion,  made 
the  God  of  Judaism  and  the  creator  of  this  world  not 
one  of  the  higher  angels,  but  an  evil  demon  ;  so  that 
Judaism  becomes  not  angel  worship  but  devil  wor- 
ship. The  dualism  is  still  more  fatal  and  hopeless, 
and  the  chasm  between  God  and  the  world  yawns 
wider  and  deeper  than  ever. 

How  Platonism  garbed  as  Gnosticism  collided 
with  Christianity  at  its  earliest  formulation,  and 
sought  to  absorb  it,  we  have  already  described.^  The 
Christ,  it  said,  comes  into  this  world  not  through 
Judaism   but  from  above  it.     He  is  a  higher  angel 

1  See  Part  I.,  chapters  i.  and  ii. 


THE  PLATONIC  COSMOLOGY.  439 

than  the  Demiurgus,  the  best  and  most  immaculate 
of  that  celestial  hierarchy  which  they  call  the  Ple- 
roma.  His  ingress  was  at  the  scene  of  the  baptism, 
and  his  egress  was  just  before  the  crucifixion,  so  that 
the  Christ  was  never  born  nor  crucified.  This  was  the 
Christology  of  Cerinthus,  who  was  now  at  Ephesus. 
The  Syrian  Gnostics  went  farther  than  Cerinthus, 
and  turned  the  whole  Jesus  Christ  into  an  apparition. 
The  scandal  of  the  cross,  the  prime  difficulty,  as  it 
was  thought,  in  commending  the  Gospel  to  the  cul- 
tivated Greek  mind,  was  hereby  removed  out  of  the 
way.  The  most  devoted  disciple  of  Plato  could  find 
room  for  Christianity  in  the  unbounded  hospitality  of 
the  Academy. 

That  the  Apostles,  during  the  first  half  century 
after  the  ascension  of  Christ,  were  well  acquainted 
with  both  these  forms  of  Gnosticism,  the  Alexan- 
drian and  the  Syrian,  we  regard  as  an  established 
fact  of  Christian  history.  To  assume  that  Gnosticism 
was  a  heresy  which  dates  from  the  second  century,  is 
preposterous.  True,  it  was  then  first  known  by  this 
name,  and  had  crystallized  into  a  perfect  system. 
But  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  before  Christ, 
that  is,  from  Aristobulus  down  to  Philo,  Judaism  in 
its  cross  with  Platonism.  had  been  giving  birth  to 
these  forms  of  thought.  They  were  as  widely  dif- 
fused as  the  Jewish-Greek  literature  ;  that  is,  through 
the  principal  cities  of  the  Roman  Empire.  The 
pages  of  Philo  are  colored  with  it.  A  community 
existed  in  his  day  which  had  cleared  itself  of  the 


440  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

hard  rind  of  the  Jewish  ritual,  and  found  their  way, 
as  they  thought,  directly  to  the  heart  of  the  Divine 
Love.  There  was  every  shade  of  hellenizing  Juda- 
ism between  the  rugged  literalists  and  this  offshoot 
from  them  at  Alexandria.^ 

That  Paul  would  know  the  Gnostic  tendencies  of 
the  Jewish  religion,  which  he  had  professed  in  its 
most  rigid  ceremonials,  is  more  than  probable,  even 
if  we  had  found  no  indications  of  this  knowledge  in 
his  writings.  Apollos  his  fellow  worker,  had  been 
a  Jewish  Hellenist,  and  was  fresh  from  Alexandria. 
Paul  quotes  the  Alexandrian  version  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament, in  which  the  Apocrypha  was  included,  a  work 
full  of  Hellenisms,  and  in  which  the  Logos  as  Wisdom 
was  strongly  personified,  if  not  already  hypostatized. 
There  was  a  Hellenist  synagogue  at  Jerusalem,  of 
Alexandrians  and  Jews  from  the  Egyptian  province 
of  Cyrene.     It  must  have  been  crowded  with  wor- 

1  Aristobulus  was  an  Alexandrian  Jew,  and  peripatetic  philosopher, 
who  lived  B.  C.  170,  and  undertook  to  interject  the  Greek  philosophy 
into  Judaism,  pretending  that  it  was  borrowed  from  Moses.  Com- 
mentaries on  the  Pentateuch  were  forged  in  his  name  for  the  purpose 
of  commending  Moses  to  the  Greeks.  Some  account  of  him  may  be 
found  in  Cudworth's  Intellectual  System,  i.  504.  The  Egyptian 
Therapeutae,  once  regarded  by  some  writers  by  an  absurd  anach- 
ronism as  Christian  monks,  were,  as  later  writers  have  shown,  con- 
templative Jews  of  the  Philo-platonic  school.  They  only  indicate  a 
general  tendency  here  run  to  its  extreme.  Philo  himself  refers  to 
them  in  his  book  De  Vita  Contempliva.  They  tried  to  find  God  after 
the  Platonic  and  Gnostic  method,  by  withdrawing  from  sense  through 
an  interior  and  secret  way.  They  formed  a  community  on  the  shorea 
of  Lake  Mceris  near  Alexandria. 


THE  PLATONIC  COSMOLOGY.  44 1 

shippers  during  the  days  of  the  Jewish  festivals  when 
the  Jews,  scattered  abroad,  came  up  thither  through 
all  the  thoroughfares  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Hence 
on  the  day  of  Pentecost  we  find  among  the  multitude 
who  composed  the  audience  of  Peter,  "  Jews  from 
Egypt  and  in  the  parts  of  Libya  about  Cyrene." 

Basilides,  one  of  the  early  systematizers  of  Platonic 
Gnosticism,  pretends  he  borrowed  his  doctrine  from 
Matthias  the  Apostle.  Hippolytus  is  authority  for 
this.^  Moreover,  Basilides  produced  an  elaborate 
exposition  of  his  system,  a  refutation  of  which  was 
made  by  Agrippa  Castor  in  the  reign  of  Hadrian 
(i  17-138).  It  is  certain  then  that  one  of  the  dis-- 
tinguished  apostles  of  Gnosticism  had  published  his 
principal  work  soon  after  the  close  of  the  first  cen- 
tury. He  was  in  the  flower  of  his  age  when  John 
died,  and  was  for  some  thirty  or  forty  years  a  con- 
temporary of  that  Apostle. 

That  John  met  the  Gnostics  at  Ephesus,  that  they 
were  there  in  considerable  numbers  and  influence 
when  he  wrote,  the  evidence  both  external  and  in- 
ternal, is  abundant  and  convincing.^  That  the  fourth 
Gospel,  the  Catholic  Epistle,  and  the  Apocalypse,  set 
forth  a  cosmology  and  Christology  calculated  to  dis- 
perse its  shadows  in  a  warmer  and  clearer  illumi- 
nation, in  the  Epistle  with  a  direct  and  conscious 
purpose,  will  we  think,  be  apparent. 

^  See  Biinsen's  Hippolytus  und  Seine  Zeity  i.  p.  65. 
'^  Eusel)ius,  II.  E.  iii.  26.     Read  also  in  this  connection,  Polycarp's 
Epistle. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  JOHANNEAN  COSMOLOGY. 

THE  Logos  or  Word,  the  term  used  by  Philo  and 
his  Gnosticizing  successors  to  designate  the 
creative  power,  is  found  in  the  Septuagint.  It  cor- 
responds in  part  to  the  Nous  of  Plato,  though  it  has 
a  more  full  significance.  The  Nous  of  Plato  is  rea- 
son, simple  and  self-contained ;  the  Logos  is  reason 
in  the  process  of  self-revelation.  The  former  may 
or  may  not,  according  to  its  connection,  involve  the 
idea  of  manifestation  ;  the  latter  necessarily  implies 
a  Being  of  whose  mind  it  is  the  utterance  and  dis- 
closure. 

"  In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,"  is  the  first 
postulate  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  Reason  was  at  the 
origin  of  things,  and  intelligence  was  coordinate  with 
being.  "And  the  Word  was  with  God."  There 
never  was  a  time  when  God  was  inclosed  within  him- 
self ;  never  any  epoch  of  silent  eternities  when  God 
was  in  repose  ;  never  a  state  of  inaction,  or  mere  self- 
contemplation,  out  of  which  He  had  to  rise  and  break 
silence.  "  And  God  was  the  Word."  He  could  not 
be  God  except  as  one  speaking,  or  imparting  himself, 
and  lavishing  the  wealth  and  glory  of  his  own  nature. 


THE  yOHANNEAN  COSMOLOGY,  443 

A  God  silent  or  self-inclosed  were  no  God  at  all.  He 
is  only  God  as  He  is  the  Word,  or  in  self-revelation. 
"The  same  was  in  the  beginning  with  God."  The 
writer  evidently  reiterates  this  truth  to  give  it  em- 
phasis, as  if  it  had  been  travestied  or  denied.  If 
Reason  were  a  co-essential  of  primal  being,  then  the 
first  evolution  from  the  central  life  was  not  through 
an  unconscious  force,  but  a  self-conscious  Divine 
Intelligence.  "  All  things  were  made  by  him,"  that 
is,  by  the  Word.  The  Greek  term,  here  rendered 
"  made,"  does  not  mean  constructed  out  of  preexist- 
ing material.  It  involves  the  idea  of  original  creation. 
All  things  by  Him  came  into  existence  (eyeVero).  The 
Cosmos  is  the  language  of  God  speaking.  Nature 
through  her  infinitely  varied  forms  is  the  forthgoing 
and  exfiguration  of  the  Divine  reason  in  self-manifes- 
tation. "  And  without  him  nothing  was  made  that 
was  made."  The  Greek  is  still  more  emphatic. 
Without  Him  not  one  thing  {pvl\  %v)  existed  that  came 
into  existence.  The  same  was  asserted  in  the  fore^ 
going  clause  affirmatively.  Here  it  is  declared  neg- 
atively, and  the  notion  of  an .  outlying  chaos  is 
repudiated  and  thrust  off  by  a  double  emphasis. 
Christianity  at  its  inauguration  rises  pure  from  the 
least  taint  of  dualism.  *'  And  the  Word  was  made 
flesh."  It  was  not  only  in  the  beginning  or  in  high- 
est and  first  things,  but  in  last  and  lowest  things. 
It  was  in  nature  and  in  humanity,  yea  in  humanity 
as  its  outermost  form,  here  on  the  earth,  where  we 
gazed  on  its  glory  full  of  grace  and  truth. 


THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL 

The  introduction  to  the  fourth  Gospel,  comprising 
what  Chrysostom  calls  the  Golden  Proem,  announces 
the  prime  doctrines  which  the  narrative  following  is 
designed  to  establish  and  illustrate.  They  interpret 
the  whole  book,  which  keeps  up  to  the  high  level  of 
the  introduction.  Forms  of  speech  are  constantly 
occurring  which  would  be  entirely  dark  and  enig- 
matical, were  they  not  held  steadily  in  the  resolving 
light  of  the  opening  chapter.  We  do  not  beheve  this 
chapter  was  written  with  any  direct  reference  to 
Gnosticism,  or  that  it  had  any  polemic  purpose  what- 
ever. That  would  have  given  it  the  coloring  of  the 
place  and  the  time,  whereas  it  formulates  a  cosmology 
which  clears  itself  of  all  places  and  times,  and  of 
difficulties  which  baffle  the  wit  of  men  in  all  ages  of 
the  world.  We  only  say  that  these  difficulties  were 
rife  when  the  fourth  Gospel  was  written  ;  that  the  air 
was  burdened  with  the  fog  of  human  speculation  on 
these  "very  themes ;  that  John  must  have  known  it ; 
that  indirectly  the  whole  Johannean  theology  stands 
negatively  related  to  those  speculations,  and  is  more 
clearly  understood  when  compared  with  them  ;  for 
they  were  the  earliest  mist  which  Christianity  cleared 
from  its  way  as  its  first  beams  shot  through  its  morn- 
ing sky.  Let  us  now  endeavor  to  bring  out,  and 
place  in  comparison  with  them,  the  features  of  this 
divine  Cosmogony. 

I.  The  Supreme  Divinity  is  here  declared  as  never 
hidden,  but  always  manifest.     There  i?  no  secret  way 


THE  JOTIAA^NEAN  COSMOLOGY.  445 

into  the  divine  love  which  only  a  few  choice  spirits 
can  find  by  introversion,  painful  and  difficult.  It 
belongs  to  his  essential  nature  to  go  out  from  him- 
self, and  there  was  no  antemundane  period  when  He 
was  not  a  creator.  Hegel's  doctrine  that  a  God  not 
creating  is  no  God,  was  eighteen  hundred  years  old 
v/hen  he  announced  it.  The  idea  of  a  God  existing 
alone  through  the  cycles  of  revolving  eternities,  till, 
tired  of  the  awful  solitude,  He  rose  out  of  it  and  pro- 
duced something  which  He  could  love,  is  one  of  the 
dismal  conceptions  of  our  finite  understanding.  In 
the  beginning,  at  the  point  beyond  which  human 
thought  is  barred  from  going,  the  Divine  was  not 
separated  from  his  Word  ;  He  is  not  to  be  conceived 
except  as  going  out  of  himself  in  creative  speech  re- 
plete with  creative  love.  A  being,  employed  through 
unimaginable  years  in  the  selfish  pastime  of  inspect- 
ing his  interior  glories,  is  excluded  from  Christian 
thought,  and  a  being  who  never  was  without  his  self- 
'•evealing  Logos,  is  the  first  affirmation  of  Christian- 
ity.i 

II.  As  clearly,  we  conceive,  does  it  affirm  that 
this  Logos  is  not  a  second  god  or  sub-deity,  but 
co-essential  with  the  One  Divine  Nature.  There  is 
no  Demiurgus  to  whom  the  work  of  world-making  is 
delegated.     That  was   the   heresy   of  the  time,  de- 

*  It  does  not  follow  that  God  from  eternity  was  creating  human 
beings,  or  that  the  present  system  is  coeval  with  Him,  —  a  doctrinf 
which  Dr.  Buelmell  has  pretty  thoroughly  refuted. 


446  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

signed  to  relieve  God  of  being  contaminated  with 
the  contact  of  matter,  and  at  a  later  day  the  heresy 
of  Arius,  leaving  God  on  the  further  side  of  an  un- 
known gulf  and  making  nature  stop  short  of  Plim  as 
leading  upward  only  to  a  finite  intelligence.  God 
was  himself  the  Word  —  or,  if  we  choose  to  make 
the  subject  and  predicate  change  places,  the  Word 
was  God.  There  is  good  authority,  exegetical  and 
grammatical,  for  reading  the  sentence  either  way. 
Either  way  it  affirms  the  same  thing,  —  that  the 
divine  Reason,  which  is  essentially  creative,  is  no  in- 
ferior Demiurgus,  but  the  Supreme  Divinity.  This 
same  disciple  says,  in  another  connection,  God  is  love. 
He  means  plainly  that  love  is  his  essential  nature  ; 
He  cannot  exist  without  loving,  for  if  He  could  He 
would  not  be  God.  He  means  here,  we  think,  just  as 
plainly,  that  Reason  in  self-manifestation  is  also  his 
essential  nature.  He  would  not  be  God  without  his 
Logos.  He  is  not  bare  goodness.  He  is  not  a  mere 
fountain  of  life  that  flows  blindly  on  and  on.  He  is 
Reason  as  well,  that  guides  it  to  ends  supremely  wise, 
and  determines  it  in  moulds  of  infinite  beauty  and 
order. 

HI.  The  notion  of  a  divine  carpenter  or  architect, 
an  essential  feature  of  Platonism,  is  excluded  from 
the  Johannean  Cosmogony.  God  does  not  build  nor 
manufacture.  He  creates.  There  is  no  preexistent 
material  which  He  works  into  his  universe.  It  is 
all  the  forthgoing  of  his  own  nature.     The  Cosmos 


THE  JOHANMEAN  COSMOLOGY.  447 

is  a  divine  speech  that  never  breaks  off  into  silence 
and  so  nature  is  the  daily  thought  of  God  in  con- 
Crete  forms,  the  print  and  copy  of  the  eternal  mind 
By  making  the  Nous,  or  mere  Intellect,  the  authoi 
of  nature,  God  is  only  a  contriver,  a  master-builder 
whose  plans  are  executed  by  inferior  agents ;  anc 
the  Platonic  theism  never  gets  out  of  this  clum's,"j 
carpenter-work  in  constructing  the  universe.  'j*h^' 
first  word  of  the  Christian  theism,  the  LogoL,  £,et; 
us  rid  of  it,  for  the  universe  is  now  the  langja;^;e  of 
God  speaking ;  and  the  old  psalm  only  rounr'ts  out  in 
to  a  sublimer  strain,  "  Day  unto  day  utteretU  speech 
and  night  unto  night  showeth  knowledge  if.  tnee." 

IV.  Hence  dualism  is  an  impossibiiiry.  It  ha« 
been  the  besetting  vice,  not  alone  oi  ^ile  Platonic 
system  and  of  those  which  were  built  ^ut  of  its  ma 
terial,  but  of  every  religion  which  had  uot  swampedl 
in  Pantheism  and  found  its  unity  th^jtC.  Here  it  is 
announced  that  everything  was  sp  jken  forth  out  of 
the  Logos,  which  is  none  other  thr.n  God  himself  ir 
the  act  of  speaking,  and  otherwise  than  by  this  procesf, 
not  one  thing  ever  came  into  e7J3tence.  Hence  na- 
ture is  sweet  and  clean,  for  it  is  God's  thought  in 
visible  and  concrete  form,  and  it  can  have  no  taint 
unless  man  taints  it  with  his  own  moral  evil.  The 
coverings  of  matter  are  iiot  corrupt  nor  poisonous, 
but  swathings  that  come  fresh  from  the  hand  of  the 
All-pure.  Sense  doej  o.y.  Iv.c  away  from  God,  but 
wms  us  toward  lino  \\^ro'^/i  avenues  that  open  up- 


448  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

ward  into  the  wealth  of  his  own  being.  The  flesh  is 
no  corrupt  envelopment  of  the  soul  to  smother  and 
extinguish  its  divine  ideals  ;  the  Logos  itself  assumed 
it  as  its  material  clothing,  and  in  it,  and  through  it, 
the  divine  glory  most  truly  and  gracefully  appeared. 
All  this  is  involved  in  the  propositions  of  the  Golden 
Proem  which  the  history  following  is  to  demonstrate. 
God  is  in  Last  things  as  well  as  First ;  in  the  End  as 
in  the  Beginning ;  on  the  outermost  limits  as  at  the 
divine  centre,  filling  all  things  ;  and  the  unity  of  God, 
nature,  and  man  is  to  be  consummated  in  Christianity. 
V.  No  MAN  HAS  EVER  SEEN  GoD.  The  infinite 
depths  of  divine  Being  are  not  merely  beyond  our 
comprehension,  they  are  beyond  the  reach  of  objec- 
tive thought.  God  as  the  absolute,  as  sheer  Nou- 
menon,  is  a  word  that  presents  no  image  to  any 
finite  mind.  He  is  only  to  be  apprehended  through 
his  attributes,  for  by  these  alone  He  comes  into  per- 
sonality. Inevitably,  by  the  laws  of  thought  and 
of  speech  these  attributes  must  become  personified 
when  we  think  and  speak  of  God.  Qualities  or 
attributes  are  what  alone  personify  anything.  Think 
away  these  attributes  one  by  one,  Love,  Justice, 
Mercy,  Wisdom,  Truth,  Beneficence,  and  the  idea 
of  God  shades  off  till  it  vanishes  from  thought 
altogether,  and  only  a  vast  vacuity  remains.  You 
may  believe  it  contains  something,  and  you  may  call 
it  the  Absolute,  but  the  word  answers  to  nothing 
in  your  own  mind.     The  vacuity  there  has  become 


THE  yOHAA'yEAiV  COSMOLOGY.  449 

complete.  Hegel  is  right,  therefore,  so  far  as  our 
own  minds  stand  affected  ;  when  after  thinking 
away  all  the  qualities  of  Divine  Being  to  find  the 
essence  within  them,  he  comes  at  last  to  nothing, 
and  makes  zero  the  ground  of  all  existence.  Only 
we  should  have  the  grace  to  acknowledge,  after  this 
process  is  accomplished,  that  we  are  the  vacuum,  and 
that  the  zero  is  only  in  ourselves. 

Hence  there  is  not  an  attribute  which  in  the  Bible 
is  not  made  to  image  forth  the  divine  nature,  and 
which  for  the  time  being  is  not  made  to  stand  for  the 
person  of  God.  It  is  God  himself,  as  if  for  the  end 
in  view  the  whole  Deity  were  there.  He  is  Wisdom. 
It  is  not  enough  to  say  He  is  wise,  for  Wisdom  is  his 
eternal  essence.  But  again.  Wisdom  is  his  daughter; 
she  was  with  Him  when  He  prepared  the  heavens, 
she  was  "  as  one  brought  up  with  him,  his  daily  delight 
rejoicing  always  before  him."  ^  As  the  daughter  of 
God,  she  is  described  at  large  in  the  apocryphal 
writings  as  doing  what  elsewhere  God  is  declared 
to  have  done  himself  But  again,  God  is  Light.^ 
Because  all  our  illumination  is  in  Him,  Light  for  this 
end  expresses  the  whole  Deity,  as  we  say  the  sun  is 
the  light  of  the  world.  Again,  He  is  Love  ;  ^  for  to 
say  only  that  He  loves,  does  not  affirm  sufficiently 
his  eternal  essence.  And  yet  again  as  to  his  retribu- 
tive justice,  he  is  a  "consuming  fire."* 

2  I  John  i.  5.  8  lb.  iv.  16. 

*    Ileb.  xii.  29  quoted  from  Dcut.  iv.  24. 
20 


4 so  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

But  when  it  is  said  that  God  is  the  Word,  or  the 
infinite  Mind,  in  the  act  of  revelation  all  the  other 
personifications  are  comprehended  in  one.  For 
everything  that  can  be  known  of  Him  comes  through 
the  Logos,  —  God  speaking,  —  the  Divine  Reason  in 
manifestation.  All  the  riches  of  his  nature,  love, 
justice,  truth,  tenderness,  grace,  beneficence,  must 
come  through  his  Word,  for  it  stands  as  the  forthgo- 
ing  of  all  that  is  known  or  knowable  of  the  Divine 
perfections.  Hence  it  is  described  as  "  dwelling  on 
the  bosom  of  the  Father  "  and  alone  revealing  Him, 
just  as  the  photosphere  on  the  sun's  disc,  ever  gen- 
erated from  its  unknowable  deeps,  floods  our  uni- 
verse and  warms  it  with  solar  day.  Hence  the  Word 
is  the  only-begotten  of  the  Father,  and  it  was  no 
paradox  of  the  Christian  fathers  when  they  called  it 
eternally  begotten  ;  for  they  only  say  over  again  in 
different  phrase  that  it  was  "  in  the  beginning,"  and 
that  God  never  insulated  himself  in  dreary  solitude. 
Hence  in  the  New  Testament  the  Word  is  the  Son  of 
God  and  in  the  fourth  Gospel  the  only  Son.  He  is 
never  spoken  of  as  made,  or  created  ;  he  is  always 
born  or  begotten  ;  not  born  in  time,  but  born  eter- 
nally and  always  out  of  the  infinite  deeps  of  divine 
Being,  and  thus  ever  becoming  to  our  finite  minds 
the  resplendent  Person  of  the  Godhead. 

A  question  here  very  naturally  occurs :  How 
came  these  divine  metaphysics  to  be  first  enunciated 
by  a  fisherman  of  Galilee .?     All  that  has  been  told 


THE  JOHANNEAN  COSMOLOGY.  45 1 

US  of  the  Platonism  or  the  Gnosticism  of  the  fourth 
Gospel  turns  out  the  most  baseless  of  all  assump- 
tions. If  you  except  Plato's  monotheism,  the  fourth 
Gospel  sets  aside  those  systems  as  to  their  dis- 
tinguishing features,  cuts  its  way  through  the  fog 
which  they  had  diffused,  and  rises  above  them  into 
the  clear  sky  like  one  of  those  peaks  of  light,  that 
first  catch  the  day-spring  and  fling  it  down  on  the 
shadows  below.  A  distinguishing  feature  of  Platon- 
ism is  its  dualism,  and  this  became  more  hopeless 
the  longer  it  developed,  till  finally  it  turned  God  out 
of  his  universe,  and  shut  the  door.  Take  dualism 
out  of  Plato  and  he  is  no  longer  Plato.  His  carpen- 
ter-work falls  in  pieces  and  vanishes  from  sight,  and 
leaves  the  Demiurgus  without  a  stone  or  a  timber  to 
build  with.  Put  it  never  so  slightly  into  the  Johan- 
nean  cosmology  and  the  whole  system  would  be 
changed  and  corrupted  as  if  poison  had  been  diffused 
through  a  living  organism  to  dissolve  its  tissues. 
There  never  was  the  least  color  of  it  in  any  of  those 
theologies  which  were  wrought  from  the  fourth  Gos- 
pel, not  even  in  the  Alexandrian  school,  which  was 
thought  to  Platonize  the  most ;  for  neither  Clement 
nor  Justin  nor  Origen  have  the  least  smell  of  it  upon 
their  garments. 

If  we  turn  to  the  opening  chapter  of  the  Apoca- 
lypse, we  shall  be  at  no  loss  in  ascertaining  the 
source  of  the  Johannean  cosmology.  It  is  all  there, 
but  in  different  form,  given  not  in  metaphysical  prop- 


452  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

ositions.  but  in  the  glowing  symbols  of  an  objective 
world.  Here  the  disciple  who  had  leaned  on  the 
breast  of  the  Master  says  he  was  in  spirit,  as  the  old 
prophets  were  when  they  saw  truth  in  its  represen- 
tative imagery  ;  that  he  heard  a  voice  saying  "  I 
am  the  Beginning  and  the  End,  the  Alpha  and  the 
Omega,  the  First  and  the  Last  —  not  only  Iv  apK-fj, 
that  is,  in  the  prime  principles  of  being,  but  in  their 
lowest  and  outermost  ultimations.  At  the  divine 
centre  as  at  the  utmost  circuit  of  a  living  universe, 
I  fill  all  things  with  myself"  The  writer  says  he 
turned  and  looked  and  saw  what  afterward  he  called 
the  Logos  represented  as  a  human  form  entirely 
glorified  ;  "  his  hairs  as  white  as  wool  and  his  feet 
as  if  they  burned  in  a  furnace  "  —  glorified,  that  is, 
even  to  its  ultimations.  The  unity  of  God  nature 
and  humanity  is  the  one  comprehensive  truth,  given 
in  one  case  as  divine  metaphysics,  given  in  the  other 
by  prophetic  vision  and  symbol,  whose  overwhelming 
brightness  was  as  the  sun  shining  in  his  strength. 

The  Logos-doctrine  was  not  first  enunciated  in 
the  fourth  Gospel.  It  only  received  here  its  final  and 
most  perfect  formulation.  The  substance  of  it  under 
different  phraseology  was  evidently  in  possession  of 
the  earliest  Christian  communions,  and  they  grasped 
it  as  the  prime  essential  of  Christianity  itself  It 
is  implied,  as  we  have  shown,  though  not  given  in  its 
completeness,  in  the  discourse  of  Christ,  as  reported 
by  Matthew,  where  instead  of  the  Word  "  the  Son/* 
is  the  phraseology  employed. 


THE  yOIIANNEAN  COSMOLOGY.  453 

Paul  was  in  full  possession  of  the  doctrine  twenty- 
five  years  at  least  before  the  fourth  Gospel  was  writ- 
ten. His  letter  to  the  Colossians,  whose  genuineness 
is  admitted  even  by  the  doubting  and  fastidious 
Renan,  and  asserted  by  all  the  ancient  authorities 
without  exception,  must  have  been  produced  not  far 
from  the  year  65.  It  is  so  full  of  nerve  and  so  robust 
with  the  Pauline  spirit,  that  Baur's  reasons  for  setting 
it  aside  we  must  regard  as  entirely  baseless.  It  was 
written  to  chide  the  heresies  which  were  plaguing  the 
church  at  Colosse,  among  which  were  angel-worship 
and  false  asceticism  —  the  doctrines  of  which  had 
long  been  gendered  in  the  cross  between  Judaism 
and  Platonism,  and  which  entered  so  largely  into  the 
Gnostic  systems  of  a  later  day.  It  is  plain  that  he 
alludes  to  their  celestial  hierarchies  and  world- 
makers,  when  at  the  name  of  the  "  well  beloved  Son  " 
the  mind  of  the  Apostle  takes  fire  in  this  burst  of  in- 
spiration—  "Who  is  the  image  of  the  invisible  God, 
the  first-born  of  the  whole  creation  ;  for  in  him  were 
all  things  created ;  things  in  the  heavens  and  things 
on  the  earth ;  things  visible  and  things  invisible  ; 
whether  they  be  thrones  or  dominations,  or  princi- 
pahties  or  powers  ;  in  him  and  for  him  were  all  cre- 
ated. And  he  is  before  all  things,  and  in  him  all 
things  hold  together  {a-vvia-TyjKi}.  And  he  is  the  head 
of  the  body,  the  church,  for  he  is  the  beginning,  the 
l\rst  born  from  the  dead,  that  in  all  things  he  may 
be  preeminent.  For  the  Father  was  pleased  that  in 
him  the  whole  pleroma  should  dwell." 


454  ^-^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

To  say  that  the  Apostle  is  here  only  describing  a 
moral  creation  would  be  to  sink  the  passage  far  away 
from  its  full  meaning.  It  is  plain  that  he  had  ob- 
tained some  vision  of  the  truth  which  John  saw  in 
serener  light.  The  Christ  represents  to  his  mind 
not  merely  a  man  born  in  time,  but  the  creative 
Word,  the  divine  Reason  in  manifestation,  and  as 
such  he  opposes  it  to  the  angel-worship  of  an  incip- 
ient Gnosticism  which  made  the  creative  Word  one 
of  the  pleroma,  an  angel  of  the  heavenly  hierarchies. 
There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  before  Paul's  day 
Jewish  Platonism  had  ripened  into  just  that  result. 

We  waive  for  the  present  the  question  of  identity 
between  the  Christ  and  the  Word,  and  why  these 
two  terms  became  perfectly  interchangeable.  Such 
certainly  is  the  fact  which  meets  us  in  the  earliest 
symbolization  which  sets  forth  the  sublime  theism  of 
Christianity.  Paul  perfectly  anticipates  the  theogony 
of  the  Golden  Proem.  The  Word  here  called  "  the 
well-beloved  Son  "  is  the  first  born  of  the  whole  cre- 
ation, the  primal  emanation  or  offspring  of  the  Eternal 
Mind  to  image  forth  its  invisible  deeps  ;  through  whom 
the  heavens  in  all  their  ranks  were  constituted,  and 
all  things  of  time  and  sense  —  all  things  visible  and 
invisible.  And  in  him  all  things  stand  together,  or 
are  held  in  order.  Not  only  the  universe  visible  and 
invisible  is  created  in  and  through  the  Word,  but  all 
its  parts  are  held  to  each  other  in  harmonious  rela- 
tions.   It  is  the  same  as  if  the  Apostle  had  said  —  All 


THE   JOHANNEAN  COSMOLOGY.  455 

things  visible  and  invisible  are  instinct  with  the  liv- 
ing mind  out  of  which  they  came,  and  they  are  held 
to  one  divine  purpose  and  end.  The  all-creating 
Word  is  behind  and  within  the  shifting  panorama  of 
nature  and  of  history,  making  all  things  and  all 
events  stand  together  as  held  in  unity. 

The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  is  beyond  all  reason- 
able question  a  production  of  the  apostolic  age,  and 
probably  written  by  a  cotemporary  of  Paul.  We 
think  it  antedates  the  fourth  Gospel  by  nearly  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  Its  introductory  chapter  as- 
serts the  Logos  doctrine  with  the  clearest  emphasis, 
and  as  we  read  it  is  exactly  parallel  with  the  utter- 
ance of  Paul  just  quoted.  "  The  Son  "  is  above  all 
angels,  and  by  him  God  "  made  the  worlds."  ^  And 
the  Father  addresses  the  Son  in  the  words,  "  Thy 
throne,  O  God,  is  forever  and  ever,"  and  again  "  Thou 
Lord  in  the  beginning  hast  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
earth  (t^v  77)1/ )  and  the  heavens  (ovpavoC)  are  the  works 
of  thy  hands."  The  Word  here  called  "  the  Son  "  is 
invested  with  the  same  attributes  as  in  the  proem  of 
John. 

1  That  Tohs  alicvai,  here  rendered  "  the  worlds,"  means  the  whole 
creation,  may  be  seen  by  reference  to  Heb.  xi.  3,  where  the  same 
word  is  used.  It  may  mean  **  the  ages  "  or  the  whole  flow  of  time. 
But  see  as  decisive  the  tenth  verse  of  Chapter  first.  We  are  perlect- 
ly  aware  of  a  different  application  of  these  texts  made  by  one  class  of 
expositors,  but  it  strikes  us  as  entirely  arbitrary. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  TRANSPARENCIES  OF  NATURE. 

NATURE,  as  we  have  defined  it,  is  the  material 
plane  of  being  which  we  apprehend  by  the 
organs  of  sense,  and  the  order  of  sequence  in  its  end- 
less changes  and  recombinations  we  call  natural 
laws.  To  ascertain  these  laws  and  group  them  is 
the  business  of  natural  science.  And  it  is  only- 
science  pretending  to  knowledge  beyond  its  discovery 
that  antagonizes  the  truths  of  revelation.  The  best 
scientific  research  and  progress  do  not  tend  down- 
ward towards  a  grosser  materialism,  but  away  from  it 
towards  the  highest  spiritual  philosophy,  and  the  line 
becomes  almost  tremulous,  which  distinguishes  the 
discoveries  of  science  from  the  disclosures  of  revela- 
tion, where  the  light  of  the  one  is  merging  in  the 
clear  blaze  of  the  other. 

No  such  elements  of  nature  exist  as  the  ancient 
philosophers  built  their  systems  with ;  none  such  as 
entered  into  the  cosmology  of  Plato ;  no  such  fixed 
primordial  elements  as  earth,  air,  fire,  and  water  ;  no 
ultimate  particles  of  matter,  out  of  which  Leibnitz 
and  others  of  a  later  day  wrought  their  atomic  theo- 
ries of  the  universe.     Nature  presents  to  us  her  ever 


THE    TRANSPARENCIES  OF  NATURE.         457 

shifting  phenomena;  a  new  phasis  every  day  and 
every  hour,  through  which  something  benign  and 
lovely  is  looking  out  upon  us  ;  and  what  that  some- 
thing is  becomes  a  question,  in  answering  which  re- 
ligion and  science  were  never  so  much  in  accord  as 
now. 

Our  text  books  told  us  not  many  years  since  that 
material  substances  were  classified  as  those  which 
could  be  weighed,  and  those  which  could  not  be. 
The  imponderable  substances  were  light,  heat,  elec- 
tricity and  magnetism,  whose  particles  were  exceed- 
ingly subtile,  and  travelled  with  immense  velocity. 
It  is  now  perfectly  well  demonstrated,  that  no  such 
substances  exist  in  nature.  They  are  only  the  equiv- 
alents of  forces  producing  motion  ;  and  the  light,  the 
heat,  the  electricity,  and  the  magnetism  measure  by 
their  degrees  of  intensity  the  amount  of  force  which 
has  been  resisted  and  deflected.  If  you  stir  the  at- 
mosphere by  the  vibratory  motion  of  your  vocal 
organs,  or  of  a  stringed  instrument,  or  by  the 
concussion  of  bodies  with  each  other,  you  produce 
wavelets  of  air,  which  striking  the  ear  produce  the 
sensation  of  sound.  Sound  is  not  a  material  sub- 
stance, but  motion  resisted.  The  subtile  ethers  per- 
vading all  the  spaces  between  us  and  the  sun  are 
acted  upon  by  some  force  in  that  central  orb,  and  the 
motion  touching  our  eye-balls  produces  the  sensation 
of  light,  or  touching  the  surface  of  our  bodies  the 
sensation  of  heat.  Light  and  heat  are  not  materiaJ 
substances,  but  motion  resisted. 


458  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Or  let  the  resisting  medium  be  varied  according  to 
laws  well  ascertained,  and  the  heat  becomes  elec 
tricity.  This  change  in  the  resisting  medium  may 
be  effected  by  an  artificial  electric  battery,  or  by 
states  of  the  atmosphere  which  is  one  of  the  electric 
batteries  of  nature.  Or  vary  the  resisting  medium 
yet  again,  and  the  electricity  changes  back  into 
light,  shown  either  by  sparks  from  the  electric  wires, 
or  by  flashes  of  lightning  through  the  air.  The 
impact  of  homogeneous  bodies  by  friction  produces 
heat,  that  of  heterogeneous  bodies  produces  elec- 
tricity, and  two  currents  of  electricity  meeting  at 
right  angles,  produce  magnetism.  What  were  once 
called  imponderable  substances  therefore  are  simply 
motion  resisted  ;  or  force  changing  its  form  of  man- 
ifestation according  to  the  method  or  medium  by 
which  the  resistance  is  made.  So  much  heat,  or  so 
much  light,  or  so  much  electricity  are  the  equiva- 
lents of  so  much  force  arrested  ;  and  so  subtile  and 
exact  have  been  the  experiments,  that  the  equivalents 
are  weighed  and  noted  down.  Joule,  an  English 
chemist,  by  a  series  of  exceedingly  delicate  experi- 
ments, tells  us  by  his  calorimeter  what  quantity  of 
heat  is  produced  by  a  given  mechanical  action  ;  and 
he  demonstrates  he  thinks  that  the  fall  of  772  pounds 
through  the  space  of  one  foot  is  able  to  raise  the 
temperature  of  one  pound  of  water  through  one 
degree  of  Fahrenheit's  thermometer. 

The  analysis  does  not  stop  here.     The  heat,  elec- 


THE   TRANSPARENCIES  OF  NATURE.         459 

tricity  and  magnetism  of  our  own  bodies,  all,  in  fine, 
that  we  call  the  vital  force,  are  resolvable  into  the 
same  general  law.  So  much  bodily  temperature  is 
so  much  force  whose  motion  has  been  arrested  ;  so 
much  nerve-power  or  brain-power  is  so  much  elec- 
tricity or  magnetism,  the  equivalent  of  so  much 
motion  converted  into  the  vis  vitcs  of  our  physical 
organism.  Our  activities  either  of  mind  or  body  are 
just  so  much  heat,  electricity,  or  magnetism  con- 
verted back  into  motion.  Touch  the  nerves  of  a 
corpse  with  the  galvanic  wires,  and  you  produce  the 
same  motions  of  the  body  that  the  will  produced 
in  the  living  man.  The  difference  is,  that  the  brain 
of  the  living  man,  which  was  the  electric  battery  be- 
fore, has  now  failed  of  its  supply,  and  an  artificial 
battery  has  been  substituted  in  its  place.  The  emo- 
tions and  passions  of  the  living  man  moved  the 
muscles  of  the  face  so  as  to  express  fear,  anger,  or 
rage,  and  this  was  done  by  the  electric  action  of  the 
corresponding  nerves :  touch  the  same  nerves  of  the 
corpse  with  the  galvanic  wires,  and  the  same  muscles 
will  move  again  into  the  same  expression.  Vital 
heat  like  all  other  heat  is  the  exact  equivalent  of  so 
much  motion  ;  nerve  power  and  brain  power  are  the 
same  equivalent  converted  to  electricity  or  magnet- 
ism, the  power  on  which  we  draw  in  all  our  thoughts, 
emotions,  intellections,  and  imaginations.  Organic 
life  is  the  equilibrium  of  these  equivalents,  and  to 
breakdown  and  destroy  the  equilibrium  is  —  deatbu 


460  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

So,  therefore,  what  were  called  the  imponderable 
substances,  are  not  substances  at  all,  but  simply  force 
changing  its  mode  of  manifestation  ;  first  into  mo- 
tion, then  into  the  equivalents  of  motion,  heat,  light, 
electricity,  magnetism,  vital  power.  These  in  turn 
change  back  severally  into  motion  again.  The  evo- 
lution of  force  by  heat  and  electricity  converted  again 
into  motion  by  the  telegraph,  the  steam  engine,  mus- 
cular action,  or  on  the  more  magnificent  scale  of 
nature,  is  only  the  illustration  of  a  general  law  which 
science  now  holds  to  be  perfectly  demonstrated  — 
that  force  ottce  exerted  never  ceases  and  is  7iever  lost. 
In  some  of  its  equivalents  it  is  always  preserved,  and 
produces  the  endless  phases  in  the  cycle  of  life  that 
ever  returns  into  itself,  and  constitutes  the  activities 
of  a  hving  universe.  This  is  the  correlation  and 
CONSERVATION  OF  FORCES  ;  in  Other  words,  their 
equivalence  and  eternal  continuance,  whose  discovery 
and  demonstration  is  the  auspicious  achievement  of 
modern  science. 

So  much  of  what  were  called  imponderable  sub- 
stances. But  what  are  called  the  ponderable  or 
solid  substances,  the  rocks,  the  minerals,  the  earths 
and  the  flora  that  grow  out  of  them  —  are  resolva- 
ble in  the  last  analysis  into  force  changing  the 
form  of  its  manifestation.  That  is  the  last  boundary 
of  science,  and  beyond  this  as  mere  physicists,  we 
cannot  go.  Matter  has  no  ultimate  units,  but  is 
divisible  to  the  point  where  it  vanishes  from  human 


THE   TRANSPARENCIES  OF  NATURE.         46 1 

perception.  All  the  properties  of  matter,  primary 
and  secondary,  are  but  the  manifestations  of  force, 
and  we  know  of  no  such  entity  as  the  essence  of 
matter.  The  most  solid  and  ponderable  substances 
are  resolvable,  the  solids  into  fluids,  the  fluids  into 
vapor,  the  vapor  into  gases,  and  the  gases  into  ethers, 
and  the  ethers  into  those  more  simple  and  element- 
ary, and  very  possibly  a  finer  and  more  complete 
analysis  will  some  day  resolve  all  the  ponderable 
substances  into  the  imponderable.  What  we  have 
called  matter,  is  composed  of  no  fixed  and  final 
atoms  that  we  know  of;  it  is  a  coordination  of  forces 
which  may  be  recombined  or  changed  into  their 
equivalents.  Thus  the  most  enlightened  material-' 
ism  tends  to  spiritualism  and  almost  merges  in  it. 
But  come  to  the  last  analysis.  These  coordinate 
forces  are  resolvable  one  into  another  and  all  of  them 
abut  upon  a  Prime  Force  which  lies  within  and 
behind  them  all ;  of  which  they  are  only  the  ever 
changing  phases  and  out  of  which  all  phenomena 
are  evolved.  The  single  question,  which  now  con- 
cerns us  is  —  What  is  the  nature  and  quality  of  this 
Prime  Force,  towards  which  all  the  others  are  re- 
solvable as  only  the  forms  and  methods  of  its  ac- 
tivity? Herbert  Spencer  says  it  is  unknowable, 
and  that  Science  is  here  brought  up  to  its  im- 
passable boundary.  But  why  unknowable .?  The 
question   is,  does   it  act  unintelligently,   like  brute 


462  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

matter,  or  does  it  not  ?  The  answer  is  —  it  acts  as 
a  vast  and  all  pervading  intelligence,  so  compre- 
hending and  stupendous  that  we  must  call  it  infi- 
nite. Take  as  an  illustration  the  planetary  motions. 
It  is  demonstrable  that  if  the  force  which  holds  the 
planets  toward  a  common  centre  and  the  force  which 
projects  them  from  it,  were  not  kept  in  equipoise 
within  assignable  limits,  the  whole  system  would 
tumble  into  chaos.  It  is  demonstrable  that  if  their 
periodic  revolutions  had  been  coincident,  so  as  to 
arrange  them  on  the  same  side  of  the  sun,  that 
is  to  bring  them  in  conjunction,  the  whole  system 
would  break  up  in  a  common  disaster.  It  is  de- 
monstrable that  the  whole  system  is  one  of  the 
most  delicate  balances  and  compensations,  so  that 
seeming  temporal  disturbance  preserves  an  intrin- 
sic and  eternal  harmony.  Some  of  their  compensa- 
tions and  balances  forecast  periods  of  thousands  of 
years.  For  example  the  orbits  and  periodic  times 
of  Jupiter  and  Saturn  are  such  that  they  may  be 
in  conjunction  and  send  disturbance  through  the 
whole  planetary  system.  But  every  third  conjunc- 
tion falls  in  advance  of  a  former  one  and  the  conjunc- 
tion point  is  carried  round  the  entire  orbit  in  2,648 
years,  at  the  end  of  which  time  the  exact  condition 
will  be  restored  and  all  the  perturbations  will  have 
completely  neutralized  each  other.  Such  illustra- 
tions might  be  multiplied  indefinitely,  so  as  to  show 
how  this   Prime  Force  into  which  all  other  forces 


THE    TRANSPARENCIES  OF  NATURE.         463 

resolve  themselves,  is  an  all-seeing  intelligence.^  It 
answers  precisely  to  the  Logos  of  Scripture,  the  Di- 
vine Reason  in  the  act  of  manifestation.  The  light 
of  science  tending  upward  meets  that  of  revela- 
tion streaming  downward  and  they  blend  together. 
Matter,  the  more  we  analyze  it,  loses  its  grossness 
and  becomes  transparent,  showing  the  motions  un- 
covered of  Him  who  works  in  us  and  around  us  ; 
and  nature  is  only  the  veil  with  which  we  cover  our 
eyes,  that  we  be  not  too  much  dazzled  or  overawed 
under  the  open  face  of  the  Godhead. 

Consider  one  moment  another  point.  Science,  we 
said,  demonstrates  the  conservation,  or,  as  Herbert 
Spencer  calls  it,  the  persistence  of  force.  This 
means  that,  so  far  as  science  knows,  the  same  amount 
of  force  now  in  the  universe  always  has  been  and 
always  must  be.  It  is  constantly  changing  in  form 
but  never  in  quantity.^  Motion  arrested  changes  into 
heat ;  but  if  you  could  utiHze  all  the  heat  you  could 
produce  precisely  the  same  degree  of  motion  again. 

1  See  Mitchell's  Popular  Astronomy^  especially  chap.  xv. 

2  Professor  Yeomans  thus  states  concisely  the  same  law:  "The 
movements  we  see  around  us  are  not  spontaneous,  or  independent 
occurrences,  but  links  in  an  eternal  chain  of  forces.  When  bodies 
are  put  in  motion  it  is  at  the  expense  of  some  previously  existing 
energy  ;  and  when  they  come  to  rest,  their  force  is  not  destroyed 
but  lives  on  in  other  forms.  Every  motion  we  see  has  its  thermal 
value,  and  when  it  ceases  its  equivalent  of  heat  is  an  invariable  re- 
sult. Should  the  motion  of  the  heavenly  bodies  be  arrested,  it  would 
produce  a  conflagration  of  the  universe."  —  Chemistry,-^.  174. 


464  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Solid  matter  changes  into  gases  and  ethers ;  but 
condense  the  gases  and  the  same  amount  of  matter 
returns  and  nothing  has  been  lost.  There  is  the 
same  now,  no  more  no  less,  that  there  was  when 
the  morning  stars  first  sang  together ;  and  the  same 
would  continue  though  the  world  should  be  "  burned 
up."  The  only  changes  have  been  in  the  combi- 
nations, each  combination  ofifering  a  new  phasis  of 
the  vast  primal  force  of  all.  The  annihilation  of 
matter  is  impossible,  for  no  such  substance  in  se 
exists  or  was  ever  created.  The  destruction  of  the 
world  is  both  scientifically  unthinkable  and  theo- 
logically monstrous.  It  is  saying,  to  state  it  other- 
wise, that  the  ground  force  which  comprehends  all 
the  others,  and  from  which  phenomena  are  evolved, 
could  cease,  or  is  not  ''persistent','  and  that  is  say- 
ing theologically,  that  the  Logos  was  not  in  the 
Beginning,  or  is  not  born  eternally,  but  is  only 
finite  and  temporal  ;  that  it  began  to  be,  once  on 
a  time,  and  that  it  can  cease  to  be  or  can  die  out 
again ;  that  God  could  be  without  it  ;  that  the  es- 
sential divine  attributes,  those  which  make  him  God, 
could  be  abolished  ;  that  the  Divine  Mind  could 
introvert  within  itself  in  the  lonely  and  selfish  con- 
templation of  its  interior  glories ;  nay,  farther,  that 
its  interior  glories  could  themselves  be  quenched, 
for  it  is  precisely  their  lavishment  that  makes  them 
beneficent  and  therefore  essentially  divine. 

Such,   then,   are   the  symphonic   affirmations   of 


THE    TRANSPARENCIES  OF  NATURE.         465 

Theology  and  Science.  Theology  declares  that  God 
is  essentially  the  Word,  was  ever  in  self- manifesta- 
tion that  is,  and  always  must  be ;  that  there  was  no 
primordial  material  outside  of  him,  but  that  all 
things  came  into  being  by  the  Word ;  or  in  other 
phrase,  that  the  Prime  Force  of  Nature  is  God  in  the 
act  of  speaking.  So  John  announces  from  above. 
Science  begins  from  below,  and  reasons  up  towards 
the  same  truth.  Nature  is  some  vast  Power  in  ac- 
tion ;  its  phases  change  constantly,  but  it  is  only  a 
change  of  equivalents,  the  sum  total  is  the  same 
yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever.  Nothing  can  be  taken 
away.  Creation  was  not  an  act  which  was  accom- 
plished centuries  ago,  but  is  an  ever  fresh  evolution 
of  the  central  power  of  the  Universe,  acting  not 
blindly,  but  as  the  utterance  of  an  Eternal  Reason. 
Creation  is  a  grand  epopee,  a  song  which  has  no  be- 
ginning and  no  languishing,  but  whose  notes,  run- 
ning through  an  infinite  range  of  keys,  make  the 
harmonies  of  the  universe.  "  The  discoveries  and 
generalizations  of  modern  Science,"  says  Professor 
Tyndall,  "constitute  a  poem  more  sublime  than  has 
ever  yet  been  addressed  to  the  imagination,"  and  he 
sums  up  his  conclusions  in  a  noble  passage  which 
we  quote  as  a  fitting  close  to  this  chapter :  — 

"  We  pass  to  other  systems  and  other  suns,  each 

pouring  forth  energy  like  our  own,  but  still  without 

infringement  of  the  law  which  reveals  immutability 

in  the  midst  of  change,  which  recognizes  incessant 

30 


466  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

transference  or  conversion,  but  neither  final  gain  nor 
loss.  The  law  generalizes  the  aphorism  of  Solomon 
that  *  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun,'  by  teach- 
ing us  to  detect  everywhere,  under  its  infinite  variety 
of  appearances,  the  same  primeval  force.  To  Nature 
nothing  can  be  added  ;  from  Nature  nothing  can  be 
taken  away  ;  the  sum  of  her  energies  is  constant,  and 
the  utmost  man  can  do  in  the  pursuit  of  physical 
truth,  or  in  the  applications  of  physical  knowledge,  is 
to  shift  the  constituents  of  the  never-varying  total. 
The  law  of  conservation  rigidly  excludes  both  crea- 
tion (temporal  beginning)  and  annihilation.  Waters 
may  change  to  ripples,  and  ripples  to  waves  ;  mag- 
nitude may  be  substituted  for  number  and  number 
for  magnitude  ;  asteroids  may  aggregate  to  suns  ; 
suns  may  resolve  themselves  into  flora  and  fauna, 
and  flora  and  fauna  melt  into  air,  —  the  flux  of 
power  is  eternally  the  same.  It  rolls  in  music 
through  the  ages  ;  and  all  terrestrial  energy  —  the 
manifestations  of  life,  as  well  as  the  display  of  phe- 
nomena—  are  but  modulations  of  its  rhythm." 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   WORD    MADE   FLESH. 

THAT  Jesus  Christ  was  a  man,  finite,  tempted, 
suffering,  having  the  same  propensities  and 
weaknesses,  the  same  wants  and  sympathies  that 
other  men  have,  is  manifest  through  the  whole 
evangeHc  narrative.  He  was  more  of  a  man  than  [f 
any  other  person  of  whom  we  have  any  history  ;  for 
nowhere  else  do  we  read  of  a  humanity  where  the 
compass  of  its  powers  and  attributes  was  so  full  and 
complete.  Its  sublimest  heights  of  moral  grandeur, 
and  its  most  delicate  shades  of  moral  beauty  are  all 
here.  The  manhood  of  other  men,  even  the  best  of 
them,  is  somewhat  distorted  or  defective.  There  is  ; 
strength  without  tenderness,  there  is  breadth  with- 
out depth ;  there  is  intensity  without  catholicity ; 
there  is  clear  intellection  without  the  sweet  and 
fervent  sympathies  of  the  heart.  The  peculiarity  of  ■- 
the  manhood  of  Jesus  consists  in  the  union  of  quali- 
ties found  elsewhere  incongruous  and  in  separation  ; 
union  in  such  majestic  and  delicate  proportion  as  to 
give  the  impression  of  perfect  symmetry  and  har- 
mony. It  requires  not  only  a  life-long  study,  but 
a  heart  open  to  all  that  is  grand  and  lovely  in  nature 


468  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

and  in  man,  to  be  brought  into  full  correspondency 
with  the  humanity  of  Jesus.  This  constitutes  the 
charm  of  the  writings  of  Dr.  Furness,  through  whom 
the  natural  life  and  character  of  Jesus  become  to  us 
a  new  revelation  of  moral  beauty  and  perfection. 
Some  of  the  critics  have  assumed  that  the  fourth 
Gospel  denies,  or  at  least  ignores  the  humanity  of 
Jesus  ;  that  it  has  a  Gnostic  tinge,  and  imports  that 
his  relations  to  space  and  time,  to  sense  and  matter, 
were  apparent  and  not  real.  Every  candid  and 
careful  reader  we  are  persuaded  will  come  to  just 
the  opposite  conclusion.  More  plainly  and  persist- 
ently than  the  synoptics,  do  the  fourth  Gospel  and  all 
the  Johannean  writings,  set  forth  the  Incarnation  as 
a  stubborn  and  fundamental  fact,  for  the  plain  reason 
that  when  John  wrote,  the  fact  had  been  denied  ; 
and  in  the  Gnostic  metaphysics,  the  essential  human- 
ity of  Jesus  had  exhaled  in  gilded  mist  and  become 
spectral.  In  the  proem  the  fact  is  made  prominent ; 
and  John  even  goes  out  of  his  way  to  put  in  his  own 
personal  attestations  as  an  eye-witness.  "  The  Word 
was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us  and  we  beheld 
HIS  GLORY."  He  puts  this  in  the  foreground  as  a 
postulate  which  the  entire  history  following  was  to 
establish.  When  he  comes  to  narrate  the  sufferings 
and  death  of  Jesus,  he  purposely  gives  his  readers  to 
understand,  that  he  of  all  the  twelve  v/as  an  eye- 
witness,  standing  under  the  cross  while  the  others 
were   standing  afar   off.     Hence   he   supplies   facts 


THE    WORD  MADE  FLESH.  469 

which  they  had  left  out ;  and  he  not  only  supplies 
them,  but  interlines  his  personal  affirmation,  as  if 
making  oath  to  what  somebody  had  denied.  "  One 
of  the  soldiers  pierced  his  side  with  a  spear,  and 
immediately  blood  and  water  came  out.  And  he 
who  saw  bears  testimony,  and  his  testimony  is  true 
and  he  knows  that  he  speaks  the  truth."  ^  He  seeks  to 
confirm  this  in  his  description  of  the  post-resurrec- 
tion appearances,  when  Jesus  came  among  his  disci- 
ples, and  showed  them  his  hands  and  his  side.  The 
Catholic  epistle  opens  with  the  same  attestations,  and 
it  is  one  of  the  proofs  of  identity  of  authorship,  that 
all  the  Johannean  writings  lay  special  emphasis  upon 
the  proper  humanity  of  Jesus  down  to  its  outermost 
clothings  of  flesh  and  sense.  The  ears,  the  eyes,  and 
the  touch  are  the  threefold  witness  summoned  to 
bear  testimony  to  the  fact  that  the  incarnation  was 
not  spectral,  but  actual.  "That  which  we  have 
heard,  which  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  which  we 
have  looked  upon,  and  our  hands  have  handled  we 
announce  to  you."  He  denounces  as  antichrist  those 
who  deny  that  "  Jesus  Christ  has  come  in  the  flesh," 
and  he  makes  acknowledgment  of  this  truth  a  test 
of  genuine  discipleship.^  The  "  liars  "  who  denied 
that  Jesus  was  the  Christ,  or  who  called  themselves 
apostles  and  were  not,^  were,  in  all  probability,  the 
followers  of  Cerinthus,  who  made  Jesus  one  persoiv 

^  I  John  xix.  34,  35.  2  J  John  iv.  1-3. 

*  I  John  ii.  22  ;  Rev.  ii.  2. 


470  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

and  the  Christ  another  person  that  merely  spoke 
through  him  as  a  higher  angel,  but  whose  immacu- 
late garments  of  light  had  never  been  soiled  by  the 
overlayings  of  mortal  and  corruptible  flesh.  If  the 
Johannean  spirit  rises,  on  the  one  hand,  into  the 
more  celestial  ethers,  it  descends  on  the  other  hand, 
into  a  realism  as  crass  and  solid  as  we  find  anywhere 
in  the  New  Testament  history.  Jesus  Christ  on  the 
side  of  his  humanity,  is  a  partaker  of  flesh  and  blood, 
and  through  that  of  the  weaknesses,  the  temptations, 
and  the  woes,  which  beset  the  race  of  Adam,  even 
to  its  humblest  and  most  forlorn  child  of  sorrow. 

In  the  fourth  Gospel,  as  nowhere  else,  Jesus  is  de- 
scribed as  in  constant  peril  of  his  life,  and  evading  the 
snares  that  would  bring  it  to  a  close  before  his  time 
had  come.  He  begins  his  ministry  at  Jerusalem, 
evidently  in  the  expectation  that  his  own  people 
would  be  the  first  to  receive  the  new  revelation,  and 
that  the  light  of  the  New  Jerusalem  would  radiate 
from  the  old,  and  thence  roll  back  the  pagan  dark- 
ness. But  he  is  opposed,  thwarted  and  threatened, 
and  a  plot  laid  for  his  life,  which  he  is  obliged  con- 
tinually to  evade ;  and  he  finally  leaves  Jerusalem, 
ceases  to  make  it  the  centre  of  his  plans  and  opera- 
tions, retires  to  the  obscure  province  of  Galilee  for 
personal  safety,  organizes  his  ministry  there,  and 
only  goes  up  privately  to  Jerusalem,  the  focus  of 
danger.  All  this  we  have  in  the  fourth  Gospel  with 
fullness  of  detail ;  while  in  the  synoptics   we  only 


X 


THE    WORD  MADE   FLESH.  47 1 

have  it  in  hints  and  fragments.  How  baseless  is  the 
theory  which  regards  it  as  a  Gnostic  production  de- 
signed to  show  that  Christ  was  not  really  incarnate 
and  subject  to  suffering  and  death,  when  the  whole 
narrative  represents  that  the  plan  of  his  ministry  was 
constantly  varied  lest  he  should  meet  death  prema- 
turely !  Then  the  assertion,  that  in  the  fourth  Gos- 
pel he  breaks  suddenly  upon  the  reader  as  super- 
human or  superangelic,  is  entirely  unfounded,  for  no 
Scripture  shows  more  plainly  and  constantly  than 
this  book,  that  his  Messianic  consciousness  came  like 
the  dawn  of  the  morning,  that  it  had  to  break  through 
clouds  of  temptation  and  of  ignorance ;  through 
alternations  of  doubt,  of  hope  and  of  fear  ;  through 
all  the  limitations  of  the  finite  understanding,  before 
the  unfluctuating  noontide  flooded  his  consciousness 
with  the  wisdom  and  the  peace  of  God.  The  fourth 
Gospel  shows  preeminently  and  in  the  lowest  degree 
the  human  phasis  in  the  life  and  character  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

But  it  contains  also  another  range  of  fact  and  doc-  //  H 
trine  pertaining  to  that  life  and  character  which  we  ' 
cannot  reduce  within  the  dimensions  of  our  finite 
nature.  The  synoptics  rise  sometimes  to  the  same 
height,  but  they  only  rise  to  it  occasionally.  It  ap- 
pears with  them  in  solitary  peaks,  far  ofl"  beyond  the 
clouds ;  whereas  in  John  it  is  a  continuous  range, 
always  bathed  in  the  mellowing  glories  of  the  hea- 
vens.    In  the  proem,  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Word,  and 


472  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  Word  is  God  himself.  He  is  not  an  angel  of 
aeon,  but  the  Being  who  creates  the  universe.  This 
might  perhaps  be  explained  as  a  rhetorical  figure,  were 
it  not  that  a  whole  range  of  fact  and  doctrine,  through 
the  fourth  Gospel,  and  through  all  the  Johannean 
writings,  keeps  up  to  the  same  level,  showing  plainly 
that  the  proem  was  given  as  a  key  for  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  whole.  Jesus  asserts  repeatedly  his  pre- 
existence.  "  I  came  down  from  heaven  "  is  the  an- 
nunciation which  startles  his  hearers  and  excites  the 
Jews  to  anger  and  charges  of  blasphemy ;  but  he 
repeats  it  in  its  sharp  significance,  and  will  not  ex- 
plain it  as  metaphor.  He  asserts  an  existence  of 
his  own  before  that  of  Abraham ;  and  the  connec- 
tion shows  that  he  does  not  mean  merely  that  he 
was  the  Messiah  in  the  counsel  and  foreknowledge 
of  God,  but  that  he  had  an  existence  which  was  with- 
out time,  and  therefore  was  before  Abraham.  In 
those  communings  with  God,  which  Jesus  had  at  the 
last  supper,  communings  of  indescribable  tenderness, 
where  no  factitious  self-assertion  is  even  conceivable, 
he  speaks  of  his  preexistence  as  a  familiar  fact,  but 
now  glowing  more  vividly  and  gratefully  in  his  con- 
sciousness, "  I  have  glorified  thee  on  the  earth,  I 
have  finished  the  work  which  thou  gavest  me  to  do, 
and  now,  O  Father,  glorify  thou  me  with  thyself, 
with  the  glory  which  I  had  with  thee  before  the 
world  was."  ^      "  Father,  I  would  that  those  which 

1  John  xviL  5. 


THE    WORD  MADE   FLESH.  473 

thou  hast  given  me  be  with  me  where  I  am,  that 
they  may  behold  my  glory,  which  thou  hast  given 
me,  for  thou  lovedst  me  before  the  foundation  of 
the  world."  ^  To  say  that  an  order  of  events  was 
established  from  all  eternity  in  the  decrees  of  God, 
is  only  to  assert  the  common  dogma  of  predestina- 
tion. Jesus  does  more  than  this,  unless  he  asserts 
the  baldest  truism,  for  every  Jew  who  took  up  the 
stones  to  stone  him  for  blasphemy,  might  have 
claimed  such  preexistence  as  that.  That  which  he 
calls  repeatedly  himself,  —  which  was  so  far  forth  his 
own  being,  that  he  applies  to  it  the  personal  pro- 
noun, —  I,  he  says,  was  with  the  Father  before  time 
was ;  and  when  death  was  near,  he  said  he  was  going 
back  to  merge  again  in  the  glory  from  which  he 
emerged  when  he  took  on  the  clothings  of  our  finite 
humanity.  "  I  have  come  forth  from  the  Father,  and 
come  into  the  world :  again  I  leave  the  world  and  go 
to  the  Father ; "  and  his  disciples  said  on  hearing 
this,  "  Now  speakest  thou  plainly,  and  art  speaking 
no  parable."  ^  Passages  may  be  quoted  which  fall 
upon  the  ear  at  first  as  like  forms  of  speech,  such  as 
"  the  Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world." 
Even  there,  other  preexistence  is  supposed  than  one 
merely  in  the  foreknowledge  of  God.^     But  the  pas- 

1  John  xvii.  24.  ^  John  xvi.  28-29. 

^  This  passage  imports  as  we  interpret  it,  that  God  did  not  merely 
provide  a  sacrifice  in  time  and  once  for  all,  but  that  eternally,  he  sac- 
rifices himself  for  his  creatures ;  that  such  is  his  nature  alwaysi  and 
the  cross  only  symbolizes  it  in  ime. 


474 


THE  FOURTH  GOSPEl. 


sages  are  not  parallel.  When  Jesus  persistently 
asserted  his  preexistence,  and  was  charged  with 
blasphemy,  and  his  life  was  imperiled  because  he  put 
forth  so  hard  a  doctrine,  he  yet  refused  to  retract  it, 
but  asserted  it  over  and  over  till  the  last.  Coming 
forth  from  the  Father  into  the  world  he  places  in 
antithesis  with  leaving  the  world  and  going  to  the 
Father.  One  member  of  the  antithesis  is  placed  in 
balance  with  the  other ;  preexistence  is  asserted  in 
the  same  sense  as  his  post-existence,  and  if  one  was 
real,  the  other  must  also  be. 

But  why  go  into  any  verbal  interpretations  }  The 
egoism  of  the  Johannean  writings  is  so  stupendous 
and  persistent,  that  we  are  shut  off  to  the  conclusion 
that  if  Christ  was  a  "  mere  man  "  though  a  sage  or 
prophet,  he  was  a  man  whose  self-assertion  transcend- 
ed all  the  bounds  of  reason  and  modesty.  For  what 
is  the  bearing  of  sage  or  prophet  who  have  any  just 
apprehension  of  their  function  and  calling }  Accord- 
ing to  the  depth  and  fullness  of  their  wisdom  and 
inspiration,  so  will  the  entireness  of  their  self-abne- 
gation be.  As  the  divine  mind  and  message  roll  in 
upon  them,  their  own  nothingness  becomes  more 
complete  ;  they  keep  themselves  out  of  the  way  lest 
they  sink  under  the  awful  burden  of  the  Divine 
Word.  "  Woe  is  me  for  I  am  undone  ;  because  I  am 
a  man  of  unclean  lips,  and  I  dwell  in  the  midst  of  a 
people  of  unclean  lips,  for  mine  eyes  have  seen  the 
King,  the  Lord  of  hosts."     No  mere  man  can  bear 


THE    WORD  MADE  FLESH.  475 

the  weight  of  the  infinite  without  being  crushed  and 
consumed  under  it.  Even  the  sage  who  comes  into  a 
larger  discourse  of  reason  bows  before  it  in  profound 
acknowledgment  that  it  is  not  his  reason,  but  a  loftier 
and  diviner  intelligence,  and  he  shrinks  from  project- 
ing his  little  ego  into  it,  to  darken  its  lustre.  But 
much  more  will  the  seer  keep  himself  out  of  sight 
before  the  incoming  of  the  Lord,  for  he  sees  and 
speaks  from  a  more  profound  and  irrepressible  spon- 
taneity, and  he  is  more  ready  to  "  fall  as  dead  "  than 
to  see  his  own  fantastic  figure  outlined  on  the  hea- 
venly vision. 

Nor  would  it  make  any  difference  in  this  respect, 
though  the  messenger  who  speaks  in  the  name  of 
God,  were  angelic  or  superangelic.  If  greater  and 
wiser  than  men,  so  much  more  perfect  would  his 
self-abnegation  be.  The  highest  angels  (so  we  inter- 
pret the  Saviour's  words),  those  who  are  nearest  the 
Lord  and  reflect  most  brightly  the  glories  of  his  face, 
are  the  guardians  of  little  children,  because  they  are 
most  childlike  and  are  brought  more  directly  and 
entirely  into  sympathy  and  correspondency  with  the 
little  ones.  And  so  to  become  great  or  greatly  an- 
gelic is  not  to  rise  into  greater  self-assertion,  but  to 
rise  to  such  a  consciousness  of  God,  that  when  made 
the  minister  of  his  truth  and  will,  all  selfhood  —  the 
I  —  vanishes  and  disappears. 

But  what  have  we  here  as  we  open  the  Johannean 
writings  }    We  have  an  egoism  for  which  the  synop- 


476  l^IIE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

tics  had  in  some  sort  prepared  us,  but  which  is  con- 
summated in  the  book  of  John.  Matthew  reports 
Jesus  as  saying :  "  No  one  knoweth  the  Son  but  the 
Father,  neither  knoweth  any  man  the  Father  save 
the  Son,  and  he  to  whom  the  Son  shall  reveal  him." 
"  Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy 
laden."  But  in  the  fourth  Gospel  the  proem  is 
pitched  to  this  high  strain,  and  the  discourse  of  Jesus 
rises  up  to  it  even  to  the  close.  He  tells  his  dis- 
ciples that  to  see  him  is  the  same  as  seeing  God,  and 
instead  of  abnegating  himself  he  puts  himself  in  the 
foreground  continually.  He  does  not  tell  his  hearers 
that  simply  to  receive  his  message  will  be  enough. 
He  tells  them  that  "  all  men  should  honor  the  Son 
even  as  they  honor  the  Father,"  for  "he  that  honoreth 
not  the  Son  honoreth  not  the  Father  who  hath  sent 
him."  He  does  not  say,  I  bring  you  the  true  doc- 
trine which  is  bread  from  heaven,  but  rather  "  I  am 
the  bread  which  came  down  from  heaven."  "  I  am  the 
bread  of  life."  He  does  not  bring  news  merely  that 
there  is  to  be  a  resurrection  of  the  dead.  He  pro- 
claims rather  "  I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life."  He 
does  not  tell  his  disciples  as  any  mere  preacher  would 
have  told  them,  —  If  you  are  obedient  to  the  truth, 
God  will  vouchsafe  to  you  a  resurrection  among  the 
glorified  ;  he  tells  them  as  to  every  man  who  is  a  true 
believer,  "  I  will  raise  him  up  at  the  last  day."  He 
does  not  say  in  prophetic  style,  —  I  proclaim  truth 
which  is  to  enlighten  mankind  ;  he  proclaims  rather 


THE    WORD   MADE  FLESH.  477 

"  I  am  the  light  of  the  world."  Instead  of  withdraw- 
ing his  own  personality,  that  the  light  may  shine  un- 
broken from  the  mind  of  God,  he  interposes  his  person 
as  if  there  alone  the  light  was  inorbed,  and  became 
the  sun  of  the  moral  universe. 

These  stupendous  claims  are  made  not  in  excep- 
tional and  rhetorical  phraseology,  but  they  are  based 
on  the  alleged  prime  facts  of  the  gospel  history.  The 
last  festal  discourses  abound  in  promises  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  that  was  to  comfort,  enlighten,  and  sanctify  the 
disciples  of  Christ.  But  who  is  this  man  who  claims 
that  he  is  the  dispenser  of  this  sovereign  agency  of 
God,  and  that  its  coming  depends  on  his  own  per- 
sonal agency  .'*  "  If  I  go  not  away  the  Comforter  will 
not  come,  but  if  I  depart  /  will  send  himr  Yet  again 
the  Father  is  to  send  him,  but  it  is  to  be  only  through 
the  intervention  of  Christ,  and  in  his  name.  What 
these  promises  imported,  and  how  the  disciples  un- 
derstood them,  we  learn  by  the  subsequent  fulfillment. 
The  time  and  place  where  the  new  dispensation  was 
to  be  inaugurated  was  Jerusalem,  at  the  feast  of  Pen- 
tecost —  and  there  it  came,  the  imbreathing  of  heav- 
enly airs  transforming  the  whole  inward  and  outward 
man,  and  creating  him  anew  in  the  radiant  image 
of  his  Lord.  And  Peter,  standing  up  to  explain  the 
new  phenomena,  rehearses  the  facts  pertaining  to  the 
death,  resurrection,  and  ascension  of  Christ,  and  says, 
"  He  hath  shed  forth  this  which  ye  now  see  and  hear." 
Saul,  the  hardest  of  the  Pharisees,  fell  under  the  same 


478  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

influence.  The  steel  of  the  Pharisee  melted,  and 
was  moulded  in  gentler  forms,  and  he  tells  us  that 
when  he  had  open  vision  of  the  source  of  the  power 
that  subdued  him,  he  found  himself  ensphered  in 
light  from  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ,  above  the  bright- 
ness of  the  sun.  The  whole  history  of  the  primi- 
tive church  only  repeats  these  facts  in  fulfillment  of 
the  promise  of  the  Comforter,  and  in  full  explana- 
tion of  the  nature  of  the  promise.  The  primitive 
church,  do  we  say }  We  might  just  as  well  say  the 
whole  church  for  eighteen  hundred  years.  For  ever 
and  everywhere  under  the  administration  of  Chris- 
tianity, when  the  Holy  Spirit  comes  with  the  most 
of  its  cleansing,  subduing,  and  transforming  power, 
though  not  with  the  open  vision  of  Christ,  it  is  with 
the  unquenchable  consciousness  of  his  presence  and 
his  insphering  light  and  love;  and  where  this  is 
denied,  the  power  of  Christianity  wanes,  its  ordi- 
nances become  meaningless,  and  the  Holy  Spirit 
pales  its  ineffectual  fires. 

Such  self-assertion  was  never  heard  of  before  nor 
since  except  among  men  of  disordered  intellect.  Why 
do  we  read  it  in  the  evangelic  narratives  without 
being  shocked  with  it  ?  Plainly  because  of  its  place 
and  setting  in  a  biography  which  is  unlike  any  other, 
and  which  none  of  our  scales  of  human  grandeur  are 
competent  to  measure  ;  and  the  entire  harmony  and 
proportion  are  not  broken  but  preserved.  But  take 
out  this  egoism  and  try  to  fit  it  into  the  life  of  an) 


THE    WORD  MADE  FLESH.  ^^g 

Other  great  man,  prophet,  apostle,  or  sage.  Isaiah, 
as  we  have  seen,  when  the  vision  of  God  broke  upon 
him  and  the  burden  of  his  message  was  laid  upon 
him,  did  not  challenge  his  adversaries.  "  Which  of 
you  convinceth  me  of  sin  } "  "Ye  are  from  beneath — 
I  am  from  above,"  but  cried  aloud  from  a  profounder 
consciousness  of  mortal  infirmity  and  weakness. 
Nor  did  John  and  his  fellow  apostles  when  a  like 
mission  was  given  them,  and  the  "  Woe  is  me  if 
I  preach  not  the  gospel "  came  upon  them.  They 
resolve  themselves  into  nothingness  as  fast  as  pos- 
sible, and  are  more  conscious  than  ever  of  a  hu- 
mane infirmity  which  mist  not  fling  its  shadow 
across  the  sunlight  of  God.  If  we  think  this  was 
owing  to  any  usages  of  speech  peculiar  to  the  men 
themselves,  we  have  only  to  take  any  of  our  modern 
apostles  of  truth  and  try  to  fit  such  egoism  into  the 
frame  of  their  history. 

I  do  not  know  of  any  man  whose  message  to  this 
age  has  been  of  more  deep  and  solemn  import,  than 
that  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  His  word,  prob- 
ably more  than  that  of  any  other  man,  has  broken 
the  fetters  of  the  body  and  the  mind,  and  prepared 
the  way  for  a  new  coming  of  the  Lord.  In  the  de- 
livery of  his  message  he  uses  very  freely  the  first 
person  singular,  not  in  the  way  of  self-assertion,  but 
'ather  to  set  forth  his  individual  convictions  in  such 
wise  as  not  to  invade  the  freedom  of  other  minds. 
But  if  this  great  prophet  of  modern  freedom  had  an- 


480  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

nounced  himself  as  "the  Light  of  the  world,"  as 
"come  down  from  heaven,"  as  the  Judge  of  the  earth 
who  was  to  sit  on  a  throne  of  glory,  summon  the  na- 
tions to  his  bar  and  part  them  to  the  right  hand  and  to 
the  left,  to  eternal  punishment  or  eternal  life  ;  if  when 
his  hearers  had  asked  the  way  to  the  Father,  he  had 
said  to  them  —  Look  upon  me,  that  is  the  same  as 
looking  upon  God  ;  if  he  had  promised  when  dying 
to  send  them  the  Holy  Spirit,  or  if  he  had  told  his 
followers  to  put  his  name  into  a  formula  of  baptism 
along  with  that  of  God  and  the  Holy  Ghost  to  be 
used  in  proselyting  to  the  end  of  time,  who  does  not 
see  that  he  would  have  been  answered  with  a  uni- 
versal shout  of  derision,  and  that  the  report  of  his 
hearers  would  have  been  "  No  man  ever  spake  like 
this  man,  because  no  man's  ravings  were  ever  half 
so  wild  ?  "  Put  any  other  great  historic  name  in  the 
same  connection  and  you  have  the  same  result :  their 
genuine  manhood  forthwith  is  sifted  out  of  them  and 
the  only  residuum  is  human  pretense  and  vanity 
puffed  out  to  their  last  attenuation. 

If  the  argument  of  the  foregoing  chapters  has  failed 
to  convince  any  reader  that  John  wrote  the  fourth 
Gospel,  and  if  there  is  any  lingering  suspicion  that 
Its  theories  of  Christ  belong  to  the  second  century, 
let  him  turn  to  the  Apocalypse,  the  conceded  and  un- 
doubted production  of  the  beloved  disciple. 

We  have  shown  in  a  preceding  chapter  that  the  im- 
agery of  the  discourses  of  Jesus  as  deposited  in  the 


THE    WORD  MADE  FLESH.  48 1 

mind  and  memory  of  John,  are  in  the  Apocalypse.un- 
rolled  as  the  heavenly  landscapes,  and  so  representa- 
tive of  the  angelic  life  and  worship.  All  that  we 
have  described  as  the  stupendous  egoism  of  Jesus 
in  the  fourth  Gospel  appears  in  the  Apocalypse  in 
another  form.  What  Jesus  had  asserted  of  himself 
in  his  discourses,  as  John  reports  them,  what  the 
Golden  Proem  had  claimed  for  him  as  the  eternal 
Word,  appears  in  the  Apocalypse  as  conceded  to  him 
by  the  ascending  ranks  of  the  heavenly  world.  In  the 
Apocalypse  the  metaphysics  of  the  Proem  and  the  dis- 
courses that  follow  and  illustrate  it,  are  seen  object- 
ively as  concrete  forms  and  personalities.  Like  the 
diagrams  of  the  mathematicians  who  put  abstract 
reasonings  into  shapes  palpable  to  sense  ;  or  like  the 
chromos  of  the  traveller  which  translate  his  words 
into  scenery  that  glows  upon  the  canvas,  the  Apoc- 
alypse translates  the  doctrines  and  theories  about 
Christ  found  in  the  Gospels  and  in  Paul's  epistles 
into  the  ritual  of  heaven,  heard  and  seen.  "  I  heard 
behind  me  a  loud  voice,"  says  the  seer ;  and  turning 
he  saw  one  like  unto  the  Son  of  man  —  Jesus  Christ 
in  glorified  form,  who  said,  "  I  am  the  First  and  the 
Last  and  he  that  liveth  ;  and  I  was  dead  and  behold 
I  am  alive  forevermore  and  have  the  keys  of  death 
and  the  underworld."  ^  Jesus  Christ,  in  the  fourth 
Gospel,  is  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away  the  sin 
j)f  the  world.   In  the  Apocalypse  the  Lamb  is  coupled 

1  Revelations  i.  10,  i"    18. 
31 


482  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

with  the  name  of  God  as  designating  the  object  of 
supreme  adoration  and  love.  "The  twenty-four 
elders  fell  down  before  the  Lamb,  having  each  one 
a  harp  and  golden  bowl  full  of  incense,  which  are  the 
prayers  of  the  saints.  And  they  sing  a  new  song 
saying,  Thou  art  worthy  to  take  the  book  and  to 
open  its  seals,  for  thou  wast  slain  and  hast  redeemed 
to  God  by  thy  blood,  men  out  of  every  tribe  and 
tongue  and  people  and  nation,  and  hast  made  them 
a  kingdom  and  priests  and  they  reign  on  the  earth. 
And  I  saw  and  I  heard  the  voice  of  many  angels 
around  the  throne  and  the  living  creatures  and  the 
elders,  and  the  number  of  them  was  ten  thousand 
times  ten  thousand  and  thousands  of  thousands  :  say- 
ing with  a  loud  voice.  Worthy  is  the  Lamb  that  was 
slain,  to  receive  the  power  and  riches  and  wisdom 
and  strength  and  honor  and  glory  and  blessing. 
And  every  creature  which  is  in  heaven  and  those  who 
are  on  the  earth  and  under  the  earth  and  on  the  sea 
and  the  things  in  them,  I  heard  them  all  saying,  To 
Him  that  sitteth  upon  the  throne  and  to  the  Lamb 
be  the  blessing  and  the  honor  and  the  glory  and  the 
dominion  forever  and  ever.  And  the  four  living 
creatures  said  Amen,  and  the  elders  fell  down  and 
worshipped."  ^ 

Not  any  man  however  great,  or  greatly  inspired, 
could  be  thus  exalted  so  as  to  receive  joint  honors 
and  worship  with   the  Supreme,  in    any  system   of 
I  Revelation  v.  8-14. 


THE    WORD  MADE  FLESH.  483 

pure  theism.  Not  any  angel  or  archangel  could  be 
thus  exalted ;  nay,  the  higher  his  exaltation  the  far- 
ther away  would  he  be  from  such  homage,  for  the 
lower  down  and  the  farthest  from  sight  would  be  all 
that  is  himself  when  ascriptions  of  glory  and  domin- 
ion were  ascending  "  to  Him  that  sitteth  on  the 
throne."  And  if  Christianity  has  thus  exalted  a 
mere  man,  however  great  and  good,  if  it  has  thus 
exalted  any  created  being  whatever,  it  is  as  gross 
a  system  of  idolatry  as  can  be  found  among  any  of 
the  religions  of  the  earth. 

Is  there  any  other  range  of  fact  and  statement, 
complementary  of  that  which  we  have  here  given, 
whereby  a  pure  monotheism  is  preserved  to  us,  and 
the  Johannean  Christology  along  with  it,  and  made 
bread  from  heaven  for  the  hunger  of  the  soul  ? 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   LOGOS    DOCTRINE. 

TO  void  this  idolatry  from  the  cultus  of  Chris- 
tianity, two  ways  are  open  to  us.  One  is,  to 
apply  to  the  record  such  destructive  criticism  as  will 
cut  out  from  it  all  that  asserts  the  essential  divinity 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Such  criticism  assumes  that  this 
supposed  divinity  is  a  factitious  halo  which  has  been 
thrown  about  him  from  the  warm  and  idolatrous  im- 
aginations of  his  followers.  Take  all  this  away,  and 
we  should  find  a  remarkable  preacher  and  reformer, 
a  man  developed  probably  from  the  best  spirit  of  his 
times,  who  was  born  and  who  died  like  other  men, 
but  who  like  some  other  men  received  an  apotheosis 
after  death.  He  was  divine,  says  Baur,  speaking 
from  the  stand-point  of  his  Hegelian  theosophy,  only 
as  all  human  nature  is  divine ;  and  the  doctrine  of 
the  incarnation  is  passed  over  to  the  interest  of  the 
race,  serving  only  as  a  type  of  the  divine  incarnation 
in  all  humanity,  evolving  the  Christs  of  every  age, 
according  to  the  nature  and  fullness  of  its  inspiration. 
Try  this  theory  and  see  how  it  applies.  Begin- 
ning with  Matthew  and  ending  with  the  Apocalypse, 
go  through  and  sift  out  from  the  record  everything 


THE  LOGOS  DOCTRINE,  485 

which  imports  the  superhumanity  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Go  over  those  passages  which  we  cited  in  the  last 
chapter,  and  all  the  Scripture  essentially  involved 
with  them,  including  the  discourses  of  Jesus,  which 
put  forth  claims  such  as  no  prophet  or  sage  could  do  ; 
go  over  these  and  eliminate  them  all,  and  what  have 
we  left  ?  We  have  not  a  "  mere  man  "  left,  nor  the 
ghost  of  a  man  which  can  be  outlined  to  any  rational 
criticism,  however  microscopic  and  keen.  The  Johan- 
nean  writings  must  be  voided  almost  entire,  as  the 
German  critics  very  well  see.  So  much  of  the  syn- 
optics as  constitute  the  very  frame  of  their  history, 
must  be  ignored  (for  example.  Matt.  i.  8-25,  xi.  27, 
XXV.  31-46,  xxviii.  18-20).  The  Apocalypse  must  be 
rejected,  —  a  book  whose  genuineness  is  past  all 
reasonable  question,  —  as  a  vision  which  has  no 
objective  reality  answering  to  it.  Whatever  is 
merely  natural  and  human  in  the  life  of  Jesus  as 
given  in  the  New  Testament,  so  interblends  with  the 
supernatural  and  superhuman,  and  makes  so  com- 
plete a  whole,  that  if  you  pull  away  the  latter,  the 
former  comes  with  it,  or  else  gives  a  remainder  of 
shieds  which  belong  to  no  history  human  or  divine. 
For  instance,  the  birth  accords  with  the  resurrection 
and  ascension ;  the  incarnation  with  the  excarnation, 
the  ingress  into  the  world  with  the  egress  from  it. 
These  mutually  explain  each  other,  and  explain  the 
miracles  as  well.  Again,  the  discourses  of  Jesus  con- 
stantly forecast  just  such  a  death  and  coming  again. 


486  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

and  impl}'  their  necessity,  and  they  give  tone  to  his 
divine  eloquence  and  to  that  inimitable  and  tender 
pathos  that  swells  through  every  sentence  of  his 
later  utterances.  And  those  are  the  very  utterances 
which  a  forger  could  no  more  have  invented  and  put 
into  his  mouth,  than  Titian  could  have  invented  the 
landscapes  which  he  copied  upon  his  canvas.  Then 
the  history  of  the  Church,  and  that  especially  of  the 
first  two  centuries,  as  already  shown,  grounds  itself 
on  just  such  facts  as  the  New  Testament  records, 
such  a  birth,  life,  death,  resurrection,  and  second 
coming  in  the  Comforter. 

We  must  seek  some  other  and  more  rational 
method  to  clear  away  this  supposed  idolatry  from  the 
cultus  of  Christianity.  We  must  find  it  in  the  key 
of  interpretation  offered  to  us  freely  and  constantly 
in  its  own  unmutilated  records.  The  proem  taken 
as  the  grand  postulate  of  Christianity,  and  not  re- 
solved into  mere  rhetoric,  gives  us  an  open  way 
into  the  heart  of  the  divine  revelations,  and  justi- 
fies the  egoism  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  The  Word, 
the  Divine  Reason  itself,  which  is  God  in  the  act 
of  utterance,  God  coming  into  personal  manifesta- 
tion, was  incarnate  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  It  was 
not  an  inspiration  merely,  it  was  not  a  vision  of  God 
like  that  of  Isaiah  or  of  St.  John.  It  was  a  more  in- 
terior union  of  natures,  the  divine  within  the  human. 
By  conception  and  birth  the  divine  was  nearer  in 
degree  to  the  human,  and  dawned  through  the  con* 


THE  LOGOS  DOCTRINE,  48/ 

sciousness  more  clearly  until  Jesus  speaks  from  it 
and  acts  from  it  as  the  normal  condition  of  his  own 
being.  Then  it  is  not  the  finite,  tempted,  suffering 
man  who  speaks  ;  it  is  the  Divine  Logos  itself,  God 
revealing  himself  with  no  admixture  of  our  mortal 
falUbihty  and  infirmity.  Jesus  in  his  full  Messiah- 
ship  has  passed  into  this  consciousness  of  the  divine 
and  speaks  from  it,  and  the  I  is  no  longer  the  man 
Jesus,  but  the  Word  that  existed  before  Abraham 
was,  which  was  always  with  God,  which  always  was 
God  in  the  act  of  self-revelation.  Even  so  would  the 
Word  ever  speak  of  himself  as  derived  from  the 
Father,  as  less  than  the  Father,  as  begotten  of  the 
Father,  and  his  only  Son.  Because  the  Father  is  the 
infinite  deeps  of  Divine  Being ;  in  its  infinitude  un- 
revealed  and  unrevealable  to  any  finite  mind.  The 
Word  is  God  so  far  forth  as  He  is  revealed  ;  forth- 
going  from  the  depths  of  his  infinitude ;  eternally 
born  of  the  divine  nature,  and  bringing  God  into 
personality  and  into  blissful  relations  with  the  creat- 
ures He  has  made. 

Let  no  one  say  that  this  is  SabelHanism  or  Arian- 
ism,  or  Trinitarianism,  if  that  means  the  worship  of 
three  persons.  The  well-informed  reader  knows  it 
is  neither.  It  is  the  Logos-doctrine  of  the  primi- 
tive church,  found  roughly  in  the  synoptics  and  in 
Paul's  fervent  metaphysics,  but  found  in  the  Johan- 
nean  writings  in  a  continuous  blaze  of  light,  the 
central  sun  of  the  whole  system  of  Christian  doc- 


488  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

trine  whence  all  its  other  truths  are  harmonized.  It 
affirms  an  essential  distinction  in  the  divine  nature 
of  Father  and  Son  ;  that  these  are  not  merely  modes 
of  manifestation  in  time,  but  were  "  in  the  begin- 
ning," and  therefore  timeless  and  eternal.  God  as 
the  Father  is  the  infinite  deep  of  divine  being, 
beyond  finite  apprehension,  beyond  the  reach  of 
human  thought ;  what  "  no  man  hath  seen  or  can 
see."  But  left  here  we  are  in  blind  worship,  and 
can  only  build  an  altar  to  the  Unknown.  Left  her^ 
we  should  not  know  God  as  a  self-conscious  intel- 
ligence, or  as  a  being  who  felt  the  yearnings  of  an 
unchanging  and  tender  affection.  But  the  Word  is 
God  speaking,  the  divine  Reason  in  self-revelation, 
ever  on  the  bosom  of  the  infinite  deeps,  and  bringing 
forth  their  treasures  of  truth  and  love.  This  is  the 
Logos-doctrine.  We  grope  towards  it  in  nature,  for 
nature,  the  more  its  forces  are  analyzed,  resolves 
itself  into  One  Primal  Force,  a  supreme  intelligence 
with  unknown  depths  beyond.  The  nature-religions 
groped  after  it  and  sometimes  saw  it  in  dim  twi- 
light. But  not  till  the  Word  was  made  flesh,  and 
dwelt  among  us  in  Jesus  Christ,  full  of  grace  and 
truth,  did  this  benign  personality  of  God  appear  in 
its  unclouded  splendor  and  break  as  a  new  sunrise 
upon  the  world. 

We  see  no  possibility  of  missing  the  doctrine  the 
moment  we  listen  to  Jesus  as  his  own  interpreter. 
When    the  Jews  charge  him  with  making   himself 


THE  LOGOS  DOCTRINE.  489 

God,  he  meets  their  accusation  by  saying,  "  Believe 
the  works,  that  ye  may  know  and  believe  that  the 
Father  is  in  me  and  I  in  him  ; "  and  to  one  of  his 
own  disciples,  as  if  guarding  him  from  a  like  mis- 
conception of  making  the  Christ  a  God  exterior  to 
another  or  a  higher  one,  he  says,  "  He  that  hath  seen 
me  hath  seen  the  Father.     Believest  thou  not   that 

I  AM  IN  THE  FATHER,  AND  THE  FATHER  IN  ME  ?   The 

words  that  I  speak  unto  you  I  speak  not  of  myself, 
but  the  Father  that  dwelleth  in  me  he  doeth  the 
works."  The  preexistent  sub-deity  of  Arianism,  we 
do  not  find  here.  The  coeternal  second  person  in 
the  Tritheism  of  the  modern  church,  we  find  not  here 
nor  anywhere.  Personal  preexistence,  claimed  by 
Jesus,  construed  as  of  another  person  exterior  to  the 
Father,  is  a  doctrine  rigidly  excluded  by  his  own 
explanations  of  his  own  language.  But  the  church-  \ 
doctrine,  ancient  and  modern,  of  "the  hypostatic 
\mion, "  an  interior  union  and  inexistence  of 
NATURES,  we  do  find  such  as  justifies  language  on  the 
lips  of  Jesus,  which  on  any  other  lips,  angelic  or  hu- 
man, would  be  insufferable,  and  would  be  blasphemy  / 
indeed.  And  so,  in  his  full  Messianic  consciousness, 
the  Divine  Word  so  possessed  his  being,  that  he 
could  identify  himself  with  it  and  say,  "  I  came  down 
from  heaven, —  I  am  the  Word."  Or  again,  the  Ab- 
solute Truth  was  inorbed  within  him  so  complete, 
the  truth  that  was  to  feed  the  world  forever,  that  he 
could  speak  as  the  absolute  Truth  itself,  and  say, "  I 


490  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

am  the  bread  that  came  down  from  heaven."  Triper- 
sonaHty,  we  do  not  find.  But  the  three  central  doc- 
trines of  Christianity, —  the  uncompromised  Oneness 
of  God,  the  essential  divinity  of  his  Christ  consub- 
stantial  with  Him,  and  the  complete  humanity  of 
Jesus,  making  all  humanity  sacred,  —  we  do  find  in 
their  full  consistency  and  harmony.^ 

The  Eternal  Word,  which  was  in  the  beginning 
and  in  which  God  ever  is,  was  so  embodied  and  imper- 
sonated in  the  Christ  that  in  his  full  Messianic  con- 
sciousness he  calls  it  himself.  As  such  he  came 
forth  from  the  Father,  and  returned  to  the  Father  ; 
as  such  he  comes  down  from  heaven,  ascends  to 
heaven,  and  is  the  Son  of  Man  in  heaven  ;  as  such  he 
created  the  world,  and  judges  the  world  ;  as  such  he 
raises  the  dead  ;  as  such  he  was  before  Abraham* 
and  as  such  he  promises,  "  Lo  !  I  am  with  you 
always."  This  we  understand  to  be  the  doctrine 
of  the  Logos  which,  carried  through  the  Johannean 
writings,  and  the  whole  New  Testament  as  well, 
makes  a  continuous  line  of  light. 

There  are  two  objections  to  the  Logos-doctrine. 
One  is  metaphysical,  the  other  practical.  The  first  is 
the  argumenhnn  ab  ignoraiitia.  We  cannot  under- 
stanc  how  there  could  be  two  natures  in  Christ,  the 
divine  within  the  human.  What  is  human  is  finite  ; 
what  is  divine  is  infinite,  and  they  cannot  be  conjoined 
in  one  person.  It  is  a  self  contradiction.  The  an- 
swer is,  it  may  be  a  mystery ;  it  is  so  more  or  less, 

1  See  the  A'ppendix  C. 


TITE  LOGOS  DOCTRINE.  49I 

but  it  is  no  self-contradiction.  And  it  is  just  the 
same  mystery,  which  we  find  in  ourselves  and  in  all 
nature,  —  the  union  of  the  infinite  with  the  finite, 
in  such  wise,  that  the  latter  is  not  abolished  and  lost, 
but  ever  remains.  The  objection  sounds  strange 
enough  on  the  lips  of  a  philosophy  which  asserts 
the  essential  divinity  of  all  humanity ;  which  has  no 
trouble  about  the  deification  of  every  child  of  Adam, 
and  sees  no  self-contradiction  there.  How  God  can 
be  in  man,  how  man  can  be  his  absolute  subject,  a 
fresh  creation  of  omnipotence  every  hour,  and  yet  be 
a  self-conscious  responsible  moral  agent,  is  a  mystery 
which  has  not  yet  been  resolved.  How  God  can  be 
in  nature,  where  the  infinite  is  ever  becoming  finite, 
is  a  mystery  which  has  never  yet  been  resolved. 
The  line  where  one  passes  over  into  the  other  eludes 
our  clumsy  analysis.  Pantheism  denies  the  fact, 
and  resolves  the  finite  in  the  infinite.  Atheism  de- 
nies the  fact,  and  resolves  the  infinite  in  the  finite. 
Herein  they  rush  into  mysteries  just  as  inscrutable, 
and  make  the  verdict  of  the  human  consciousness 
a  lie.  In  the  humanity  of  Jesus  Christ,  a  humanity 
sinless  and  complete,  there  is  also  the  union  of  the 
infinite  and  the  finite,  but  a  union  in  such  de- 
gree as  brings  God  vastly  nearer  to  ourselves  than 
in  a  human  nature  depraved  and  darkened  by  sin, 
and  vastly  nearer  than  in  dumb  nature  around  us  ; 
a  union  in  which  the  finite  is  so  turned  into  living 
transparencies   that   herein  the   Word  becomes   the 


492  T^E  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

perfect  image  and  manifestation  of  the  Godhead.  In 
the  Johannean  speech  and  imagery  it  is  God  not 
only  in  first  things  but  in  last  things ;  not  only 
in  the  centres  of  infinite  being,  but  in  the  lowest 
degree  of  the  finite,  even  to  the  material  clothings 
of  our  human  nature  which  were  lighted  up  with 
the  transfigurations  of  his  glory.  God  in  nature, 
is  power,  majesty,  beneficence  ;  God  in  our  sinful 
humanity  is  conscience  with  trembling  apprehen- 
sions of  the  divine  justice.  God  in  Christ  is  Father- 
hood, justice,  mercy,  love,  tenderness,  forgiveness, 
sacrifice,  the  inmost  heart  of  God  lavished  on  the 
creatures  of  his  hand.  It  is  a  revelation  which  the 
world  waited  for  and  needed  to  be  prepared  for.  It 
unitizes  its  history  and  lights  up  its  annals  to-day. 
It  meets  science  in  its  gropings  upward  at  the 
vanishing  point  of  its  discoveries,  and  transfigures 
nature  in  a  light  which  is  above  nature,  turning  it 
into  living  types  of  the  same  spiritual  realities  which 
revelation  had  brought  into  more  open  view. 

But  there  is  a  more  practical  objection  often  urged 
against  the  Logos-doctrine.  It  takes  Christ  out  of 
our  human  sympathies  and  loves.  He  ceases  to 
be  our  example,  our  brother  whom  we  may  follow 
through  like  temptations  and  victories.  Make  him 
like  one  of  ourselves,  a  development  of  our  own 
human  nature,  under  like  conditions  of  trial,  suffer- 
'ng,  and  help  from  God,  and  how  encouraging  to  fol- 
"bw  in  his  steps  !     Make  him  divine,  as  no  other  hu- 


THE  LOGOS  DOCTRINE.  493 

man  being  ever  was  or  can  be,  and  how  vain  must 
all  our  efforts  be  to  imitate  his  virtues  and  put  on  his 
perfections  and  graces ! 

We  should  be  very  sorry  to  abate  the  admiration 
of  any  one  who  has  been  smitten  with  the  loveliness 
of  the  character  of  Jesus,  seen  merely  on  his  human 
side.  That  it  has  vastly  exalted  the  ideals  of  the 
world,  as  to  what  constitutes  the  worth  and  glory  of 
a  perfected  manhood,  and  the  direction  toward  which 
we  must  strive  for  its  attainment,  is  certainly  true. 
That  class  of  the  virtues  which  are  hardest  to  prac- 
tice, and  which,  in  the  world's  estimate,  were  scarcely 
reckoned  as  virtues  at  all,  —  forgiveness,  meekness, 
love  of  enemies,  love  of  man  as  man,  complete  self- 
consecration  in  the  service  of  the  race,  —  are  mani- 
fest in  Jesus  Christ,  not  only  as  the  loftiest  ideals, 
but  as  the  most  concrete  realities,  clothed  in  flesh 
and  blood  like  our  own,  and  as  such,  flinging  per- 
petual rebuke  on  all  our  selfish  strifes,  angers,  and 
enmities,  and  in  some  degree  charming  them  into  si- 
lence and  peace. 

But  if  Christ  is  our  pattern,  so  is  God  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  sense,  and  as  He  is  revealed  in  the 
Christ  himself :  "  Be  ye  perfect,  as  your  Father  in 
heaven  is  perfect."  "  Be  ye  followers  of  God,  as  dear 
children."  Must  God,  too,  be  brought  down  within 
our  finite  proportions,  in  order  that  we  may  follow 
Him  }  Or  shall  we  not  gratefully  acknowledge,  rather, 
that  the  ideals  which  shine  down  upon  us  from  the 


494  "^^^  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Divine  Perfections,  are  all  the  more  worthy  of  our 
aspiration  and  love  because  no  dimness  has  come 
over  them  from  our  corrupt  earthly  exhalations  ? 
And  how  true  it  is,  that  these  ideals  never  would 
have  been  furnished  us  through  sheer  development, 
and  that  they  come  down  to  us  out  of  heaven,  as 
imaged  in  a  humanity  in  which  dwelt  the  fullness  of 
the  Godhead  bodily  !  And  if  eighteen  hundred  years 
of  culture  and  progress,  with  all  the  added  appliances 
of  education  and  philosophy,  still  leave  those  ideals 
burning  far  above  us  in  their  solitary  splendor  and 
beauty,  away  in  the  depths  of  infinite  space,  Christ 
as  a  mere  example  which  I  am  to  follow  and  overtake, 
is  no  such  vast  encouragement  after  all.  There  it 
shines, —  a  star  in  the  heavens  of  royal  brightness 
and  magnitude,  but  I  cannot  reach  it. 

If  Jesus  Christ,  as  he  beams  upon  me  from  the 
only  biographies  which  we  have  of  him,  taken  in  the 
whole  range  of  his  nature,  and  the  whole  height  of 
his  excellency,  is  a  model  which  I  am  expected  to 
imitate  and  translate  into  my  daily  life,  then  he  is  no 
encouragement  to  me,  but  condemnation  and  blank 
despair.  How  long  must  I  attain  before,  standing  up 
to  challenge  the  world,  I  can  say,  "  Which  of  you 
convinceth  me  of  sin } "  How  long  before  I  can  tell 
my  hearers,  "  Ye  are  from  beneath ;  I  am  from 
above  t "  How  long  before  I  can  announce  to  them, 
"  All  that  the  Father  hath  is  mine,"  or  "  No  man  know-^ 
eth  God  but  me,  and  he  to  whom  I  shall  reveal  Him  ?*' 


THE  LOGOS  DOCTRINE.  495 

At  what  stage  of  my  moral  progress  may  I  become 
so  at  one  with  Almighty  God,  that  I  ma>  consider 
myself  his  purely  embodied  reason,  and  speak  in  my 
own  name,  and  from  my  own  self-consciousness  as 
from  God  himself,  and  bend  his  bow  and  launch  his 
thunders  ?  "  The  hour  is  coming  when  all  who  are 
in  the  graves  shall  hear  my  voice,  and  shall  come 
forth  —  they  that  have  done  good  to  a  resurrection 
of  life,  and  they  that  have  done  evil,  to  a  resurrection 
of  condemnation."  Or  when  from  my  super-angelic 
acquirements  may  I  announce  —  "I  am  the  Alpha 
and  the  Omega,  the  beginning  and  the  end,  the  first 
and  the  last,  and  I  hold  the  keys  of  hades  and  death  ?" 
To  make  Jesus  Christ  my  model  throughout,  would 
not  crown  me  with  all  human  graces  and  excellences. 
but  would  place  me  a  fantastic  figure  on  the  heights 
of  heaven,  gesticulating  in  its  lightnings  and  outlined 
for  a  moment  on  its  thunderclouds,  the  next  moment 
to  disappear  in  its  consuming  fires. 

And  if  this  majestic  and  beautiful  life  is  not  to  be 
taken  as  the  biographers  have  made  it,  if  they  have 
interjected  imaginary  facts  and  discourses,  and  I  must 
carve  it  and  reconstruct  it  in  order  to  make  it  sheerly 
human,  and  bring  it  so  near  to  my  own  condition  as 
to  make  it  easy  for  me  to  copy,  what  becomes  of  its 
value  to  me  as  an  example }  I  can  make  it  then  just 
what  I  please.  I  shall  leave  out  what  I  think  unat- 
tainable, very  likely  the  excellences  and  graces  after 
which  I  ought  to  strive  with  prayers  and  self-denials, 


496  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

and  the  model  of  perfection  which  I  shall  construct 
will  not  be  an  ideal  let  down  to  me  complete  out  of 
heaven,  but  one  which  I  have  made  out  of  my  own 
preconceptions,  and  which,  in  some  sort,  will  be  a 
pattern  of  my  own  contrivance.  Jesus  Christ  as  the 
perfect  example,  subjected  to  such  a  process  as  this, 
is  not  the  humanity  ever  shining  above  us,  but  con- 
structed after  our  own  notions,  and  brought  near  to  a 
level  with  ourselves. 

An  example  to  imitate  is  not  my  primary  and 
sorest  need.  I  can  find  plenty  of  good  examples  when 
I  want  them,  scattered  along  the  ages,  much  nearer 
to  me  and  more  easy  of  imitation  than  the  example 
of  Jesus  Christ.  I  can  find  enough  of  them  which 
are  not  altogether  out  of  my  reach,  and  I  should 
doubtless  apply  myself  to  copy  them,  if  the  main 
business  of  life  consisted  in  plagiarising  the  virtues  of 
dead  men.  Indeed  I  have  altogether  too  many  good 
examples  already  for  my  peace  of  mind.  They  are 
all  about  me,  flinging  a  lustre  across  my  path  at 
every  step  and  rebuking  my  low  attainment.  They 
are  in  my  own  community,  in  my  own  household ; 
examples  of  royal  men  and  women,  the  beauty  of 
whose  daily  lives  makes  us  ugly.  Thank  God  for 
these,  but  our  deepest  necessities  are  not  in  this  di- 
rection. Models  of  behavior  for  one  man,  will  not 
serve  for  another  ;  his  environment,  his  duties,  and 
the  sweep  of  his  inward  life  being  altogether  differ- 
ent.    We  want  God.     Our  deepest  hunger  and  thirst 


rilE  LOGOS  DOCTRTiVE.  497 

reach  thitherward.  We  want  Him  both  within  and 
from  above.  Within  He  comes  to  all,  but  with  a  vast 
difference  as  to  distinctness  and  clearness,  as  the 
shinings  of  his  presence  struggle  through  the  chaos 
of  our  evils  and  passions.  We  want  Him  from  above 
also,  in  the  unclouded  glory  of  his  attributes,  across 
whose  serene  disk  no  spots  from  our  own  depravity 
are  passing  to  bewilder  and  darken  our  judgment. 
We  want  Him  from  above  to  flood  our  consciousness 
with  Hght,  uncolored  by  our  own  passions  and  false 
conceptions,  to  make  clear  our  inward  beholdings, 
and  bring  the  subjective  consciousness  into  corre- 
spondency with  the  eternal  objective  Reality.  For 
want  of  this,  what  deities  have  men  conceived  out  of 
their  own  lusts  and  fears,  and  then  grovelled  before 
them  —  the  reflex  image  of  themselves  !  For  want 
of  this  how  have  men  sought  out  of  their  own  empti- 
ness deities  shadowy  and  unthinkable  —  the  reflex 
image  of  themselves  !  We  want  God  revealed  from 
above,  not  less  than  from  within,  that  his  image 
within,  overlaid  and  darkened  with  corruption,  both 
hereditary  and  actual,  may  be  cleared  and  made 
bright.  We  want  God  from  above,  unobscured  by 
the  guessings  of  any  human  theosophies,  to  melt  the 
ice  out  of  us,  to  warm  our  frozen  affections,  and  en- 
large them  to  universal  love.  And  with  this  the  true 
ideals  of  manhood  will  come  also  ;  come  to  every  man 
according  to  the  sphere  of  duty  he  is  to  act  in,  with 
inspirations  and  impulsions  to  follow  them,  anc'  fiU 


498  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

that  sphere  with  a  fragrancy  and  light  which  are  the 
breathings  and  shinings  of  the  Lord.  Then  the 
ideals  we  are  to  follow  will  not  be  some  good  example 
of  sainthood,  after  the  pattern  of  which  we  must  be 
stretched  or  trimmed  ;  they  will  be  given  every  hour 
to  our  clarified  reason  ;  the  pillar  of  flame  that  always 
goes  before  us,  the  heavenly  vision  that  always  leads 
us  on. 

The  strictly  human  virtues  of  the  man  Jesus  Christ 
are  not  more  valuable  to  us  as  examples  of  a  full- 
orbed  humanity,  than  as  revelations  of  the  Divine  at- 
tributes. Nature  reveals  God  only  on  the  lower  and 
outer  planes  of  existence.  Man,  sinful  and  unre- 
generate,  is  at  best  his  distorted  and  broken  image. 
But  a  humanity  perfected  under  his  hand,  and  in 
which  He  dwells  in  fullness,  is  the  complete  thought 
of  God  as  to  what  moral  perfection  truly  is.  Whether 
God's  justice,  mercy,  tenderness,  forgiveness,  com- 
passion and  love,  are  the  same  in  kind  with  those 
qualities  as  we  find  them  in  the  characters  of  the 
best  men,  or  whether  as  Mr.  Mansel  says,  they  stand 
like  algebraic  signs  for  unknown  quantities  when  we 
talk  of  the  awful  and  infinite  One,  are  questions 
which  are  painfully  oppressive,  till  the  Deity  shines 
upon  us  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.  Herein  we 
know  that  God  is  not  only  divine  but  human  as  well. 
Because  all  the  virtues  of  Jesus  are  human  virtues, 
we  know  that  the  attributes  of  God  are  human  at- 
tributes, for  the  former  are  the  unobstructed  creation 


THE  LOGOS  DOCTRINE.  J^(^ 

of  the  latter  and  therefore  their  direct  and  resplend- 
ent image,  and  so  the  open  revelation  of  a  Divine 
humanity.  Thus  the  union  between  God  and  all  his 
human  children  as  they  become  one  in  Christ  is  in- 
timate and  full ;  they  are  partakers  each  of  the  other's 
nature ;  the  Divine  of  the  human,  and  the  human  of 
the  Divine,  and  the  relation  is  all-sufficing  and  inde- 
scribably sweet  and  tender.  "  I  am  the  Vine,  ye  are 
the  branches,"  unfolds  all  its  beautiful  significance. 

We  want  God  not  alone  in  our  darkened  intui- 
tions, but  from  the  cloven  heavens.  Other  religions 
abound  in  both  precept  and  example.  There  have 
been  good  men,  thank  God,  under  all  forms  of  faith 
and  codes  of  morals  that  have  anticipated  some  of 
the  divine  sayings  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  The 
best  men  of  all  nations  and  ages  have  seen  in  some 
degree,  at  least  in  their  most  lucid  hours,  what  they 
ought  to  do  and  what  they  ought  to  be.  Buddhism, 
Parseeism,  and  Judaism,  as  the  Essenes  received  it, 
had  their  lofty  ideals  of  moral  perfection,  and  their 
strivings  after  it.  God  has  never  been  without  a 
witness,  for  the  Word  has  ever  knocked  at  the  door 
of  the  human  heart,  and  sought  to  enlighten  every 
man  that  cometh  into  the  world.  But  in  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  the  heavens  indeed  are  cloven,  and  not 
only  our  ideals  of  perfection  are  exalted  and  purified, 
but  God  is  yielded  to  us  with  transforming  power  to 
cleanse  from  evil,  to  energize,  to  create  anew,  to 
bring  the  ideals  which  He  gives  more  rapidly  to  their 


500  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

realization,  and  to  glorify  himself  in  a  human  nature 
redeemed  and  sanctified.  Do  you  say  that  after 
eighteen  hundred  years  the  work  is  not  yet  done,  and 
very  imperfectly  done  in  Christendom  itself?  But 
what  are  eighteen  centuries  in  the  cycles  of  God,  for 
bringing  such  a  world  as  this  to  such  a  pitch  of 
glory  and  of  experimental  knowledge  of  himself  ?  It 
was  longer  than  that  before  the  world  discovered  that 
the  nearest  fixed  star  was  any  thing  but  a  twinkling 
point  in  the  firmament.  But  Herschell  says  that 
when  he  turned  his  glass  in  that  direction,  the  star 
changed  to  a  sun  and  came  on  like  the  dawn  of  the 
morning,  and  he  had  to  turn  away  from  the  beautiful 
sight.  What  wonder  that  God,  revealed  in  Jesus 
Christ,  should  not  be  seen  at  once  and  alike  by  all ; 
yea,  that  He  only  seems  far  off  like  a  shimmering 
star !  What  mercy  is  it  that  this  is  even  so  !  and  that 
only  so  far  forth  as  the  heart  is  renewed  and  the  vis^ 
ion  clarified  and  enlarged  thereby,  He  comes  nearer 
and  nearer,  till  He  warms  and  fertilizes  our  whole 
being,  and  fills  our  whole  life  with  the  day-spring, 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  JOHANNEAN   ATONEMENT. 

nr^HE  Christian  atonement  may  be  contemplated 
-^  from  two  very  different  points  of  view.  It  is 
a  doctrine  of  philosophy,  or  it  is  a  doctrine  of  the 
Christian  experience.  The  former  we  grasp  with 
the  understanding  only,  as  we  attempt  to  fathom  the 
reasons  and  methods  of  the  Divine  government ;  the 
latter  we  know,  as  its  manifest  results  are  achieved 
and  as  they  glow  in  the  consciousness  of  the  believer. 
As  a  question  of  the  understanding,  it  is  a  matter  of 
indefinite  controversy,  inasmuch  as  all  the  reasons  of 
the  Divine  government  involve  the  knowledge  of  all 
the  laws  both  of  the  spiritual  and  the  natural  world. 
As  a  question  of  consciousness  it  admits  of  no  con- 
troversy, for  the  atonement  of  the  Christian  experi- 
ence is  the  believer  himself  brought  into  harmony 
with  the  Divine  mind,  purpose  and  will,  through  the 
Mediator ;  and  it  involves  a  knowledge  of  the  love  of 
Christ,  and  its  exceeding  and  abounding  peace. 
This  is  the  atonement  as  a  doctrine  of  individual 
faith.  Stated  at  large  and  as  the  final  achievement 
of  God  in  this  world,  the  atonement  is  the  union  of 


502  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

God,  man,  and  nature  ;  so  that  disharmony  between 
man  and  nature,  and  between  both  and  God,  shall 
cease  altogether,  and  God  become  all  in  all ;  or  in 
Johannean  phrase,  He  shall  be  not  only  Iv  apKrj,  in  be- 
ginnings, but  6  to-xaros,  the  consummation ;  glorified 
in  lowest  forms  of  nature  and  humanity. 

The  Pauline  writings  treat  this  doctrine  as  one  of 
the  understanding.  But  they  do  this  almost  exclu- 
sively, as  regards  Jews  and  Jewish  converts,  and  to 
silence  objections  which  come  from  that  quarter,  and 
which  were  temporary  and  local.  When  Paul  leave? 
them  he  rises  to  the  heart  of  the  doctrine.  But  John 
did  not  write  for  Jews.  Jerusalem  had  fallen,  and 
with  it  Judaism  was  passing  away,  and  Christianity, 
as  the  New  Jerusalem,  had  come  in  its  place.  John 
throughout  gives  the  atonement  purely  as  a  doctrine 
of  the  Christian  consciousness,  and  as  it  came  from 
the  lips  of  Jesus  in  those  Sabbatic  hours,  when  his 
disciples  were  drawn  nearest  to  him,  and  his  heart 
opened  out  to  them  its  inmost  treasures  of  truth  and 
love.  How  this  doctrine  of  his  religion  was  then 
declared  and  explicated,  becomes  a  question  of  su- 
preme interest,  for  we  shall  be  sure  to  have  its  essen- 
tial contents  as  concerns  the  salvation  of  the  Christian 
believer. 

In  one  of  his  latest  discourses,  which  seems  to 
have  been  uttered  in  colloquial  intercourse  with  the 
disciples  on  their  way  from  the  last  supper  to  Geth 
semane,  the  oneness  of  the  discij^le  with  his  Lord, 


THE  JOIIANNEAN  ATONEMENT.  503 

and  the  means  of  it,  are  set  forth  by  imagery  of  great 
significance  and  beauty. 

"  I  am  the  true  Vine  and  my  Father  is  the  husbandman. 
Eveiy  branch  in  me  that  beareth  not  fruit  he  taketh  away :  and 
every  branch  that  beareth  fruit  he  cleanseth,  that  it  may  bear 
more  fruit.  Ye  are  clean  already  by  reason  of  the  word  which 
I  have  spoken  unto  you.  Abide  in  me  and  I  will  abide  in  you. 
As  the  branch  cannot  bear  fruit  of  itself,  unless  it  abide  in  the 
Vine,  so  neither  can  ye  unless  ye  abide  in  me.  I  am  the  Vine, 
ye  are  the  branches.  He  that  abideth  in  me  and  I  in  him,  the 
same  beareth  much  fruit ;  for  separated  from  me  ye  can  do 
nothing.  If  any  one  abide  not  in  me,  he  is  cast  forth  as  a 
branch,  and  is  withered ;  and  men  gather  it,  and  cast  it  into  the 
fire,  and  it  is  burned.  If  ye  abide  in  me  and  my  words  abide 
in  you,  ask  whatever  ye  will  and  it  shall  be  done  for  you. 
Herein  is  my  Father  glorified,  that  ye  bear  much  fruit.  So 
shall  ye  be  my  disciples." 

Neither  man  nor  angel  could  avow  himself  an  orig- 
inal fountain  of  Hfe  unto  others,  so  as  to  tell  them, 
"  Separated  from  me  ye  can  do  nothing ; "  or  "  ye  are 
cast  forth  as  a  branch  cut  from  its  parent  stem,  to 
wither  and  die."  Least  of  all,  could  any  man  say 
this  on  the  eve  of  his  death,  when  the  total  and  final 
separation  was  to  take  place.  Jesus  plainly  is  speak- 
ing here  as  the  Word ;  God  revealing  himself  in  all 
his  human  attributes,  so  that  the  believer  could  lay 
hold  of  Him  by  a  clear  and  living  faith,  and  thereby 
the  Divine  Life  flow  down  through  all  his  nature, 
as  the  juices  of  the  Vine  flow  down  through  the 
'^ranches,  till   the  grapes   hang  in  clusters   on  the 


504  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

Stems  This  is  the  true  oneness  with  Christ.  Sal- 
vation in  him  is  not  by  an  imputed  righteousness, 
but  by  a  righteousness  imparted  and  inwrought ; 
manifested  in  the  fruits  of  righteous  Uving  ;  in  the 
clustering  charities  of  a  Hfe  always  replenished  and 
flavored  from  its  Divine  fountain.  It  will  be  seen 
by  this  that  the  Johannean  theology  is  the  farthest 
possible  from  any  form  of  Antinomianism,  and  the 
farthest  possible  from  teaching  a  dreamy  and  lazy 
devotion.  True,  it  is  profoundly  contemplative ;  but 
to  the  end  of  being  more  intensely  practical,  and  pro- 
ducing fruit  more  abundantly,  and  of  more  heavenly 
quality ;  and  any  member  of  the  Christian  organism 
that  is  not  thus  receptive  of  the  Christ,  both  in  faith 
and  in  practice,  is  a  withered  branch  to  be  pruned 
away,  cast  into  the  fire  and  burned. 

How  the  believer  is  to  abide  in  Christ  and  receive 
life  from  him  as  the  eternal  fountain,  we  learn  more 
fully  and  further  on  in  these  last  divine  colloquies 
with  the  disciples.  The  Holy  Spirit  as  Teacher, 
Comforter  and  Guide,  is  promised  as  the  gift  of 
Christ,  as  coming  through  faith  in  him,  and  obe- 
dience to  his  word.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  the  forthgoing 
sphere  of  the  Divine  light  and  love,  finding  the  be- 
aever  and  infolding  him  in  its  celestial  airs ;  hence 
the  Father  and  the  Son  —  God  through  his  revealing 
Word  —  coming  to  him  and  making  their  abode  with 
him.  It  is  the  opening  down  of  the  Divine  Nature 
to  transform  the  human,  and  take  up  the  burden  of 


THE  yOHANNEAN  ATONEMENT.  505 

its  sins  and  sorrows,  and  bring  man  into  fellowship 
with  God.  But  this  could  not  be  unless  man  were 
first  brought  into  true  fellowship  with  man.  It  would 
not  have  availed  to  reveal  God  unless  states  of  recep- 
tion had  been  wrought  in  men  fitted  to  receive  Him. 
Oneness  with  the  neighbor  is  a  prime  condition  of 
oneness  with  the  heavenly  Father.  Man  must  stand 
right  towards  his  brother,  or  he  never  can  stand  right 
towards  his  God,  and  be  receptive  of  Him,  and  a  par- 
taker of  his  nature.  Hence  the  new  code  of  human 
fellowship  which  Jesus  labored  to  inaugurate  and 
exemplify  in  his  own  life  on  the  earth.  Every  man 
is  a  part  of  every  other  man  —  this  is  the  sum  of  the 
new  doctrine,  and  on  this  was  founded  the  society  of 
behevers  called  a  church.  Until  that  was  done, 
there  was  no  organic  form  for  God's  reception  and 
indwelling  amongst  men.  Until  that  was  done,  men 
individually  were  so  many  repellent  forces,  every 
man's  life  antagonizing  the  life  of  God.  But  Jesus 
left  eleven  disciples,  recipients  of  his  word,  and  the 
first  organized  form  of  his  kingdom  of  universal  love. 
What  followed  t  The  God  who  had  been  revealed, 
had  now  a  place  to  come  in.  As  soon  as  man  was 
put  right  towards  his  fellows  and  towards  his  God, 
the  Divine  love  and  blessing  came  and  swept  his  soul 
/ike  a  lyre.  The  procession  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
followed  in  the  logical  sequence  of  events.  God  new- 
ly revealed  as  divinely  human,  began  to  flood  our 
wasted  nature  with  his  life  and  power,  and  hence  the 


506  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

new  dispensation  of  the  Spirit  as  the  inheritance  of 
after  ages.  Bear  this  in  mind,  and  we  shall  have  a 
full  explication  of  the  atonement,  or  the  doctrine  of 
man  made  at  one  with  God  in  Christ  as  enunciated 
in  the  following  language  :  — 

"  And  now  I  am  coming  to  thee ;  and  these  things  I  speak  in 
the  world,  that  they  may  have  thy  joy  complete  in  themselves. 
I  have  given  them  thy  word  ;  and  the  world  hated  them,  be- 
cause they  are  not  of  the  world,  as  I  am  not  of  the  world.  I 
ask  not  that  thou  take  them  out  of  the  world,  but  that  thou  keep 
them  out  of  the  evil.  They  are  not  of  the  world  as  I  am  not  of 
the  world.  Consecrate  them  in  the  service  of  thy  truth  ;  thy 
word  is  truth.  Since  thou  didst  send  me  into  the  world,  I  also 
sent  them  into  the  world.  And  in  their  behalf  I  consecrate 
myself,  that  they  also  may  be  consecrated  in  the  service  of 
truth.  Yet  not  for  these  only  do  I  pray,  but  also  for  those  who 
believe  in  me  through  their  word  ;  that  they  all  may  be  one,  as 
thou  Father  art  in  me  and  I  in  thee,  that  they  may  be  in  us, 
that  the  world  may  believe  that  thou  didst  send  me.  And  the 
glory  which  thou  hast  given  me  I  have  given  them,  that  they 
may  be  one  because  we  are  one.i  I  in  them  and  thou  in  me, 
that  they  may  be  made  perfect  in  one,  that  the  world  may  know 
that  thou  hast  sent  me,  and  hast  loved  them  as  thou  hast 
loved  me.  Father !  as  to  those  whom  thou  hast  given  me,  I 
desire  that  they  also  be  with  me  where  I  am,  that  they  may 
behold  my  glory  which  thou  hast  given  me  ;  for  thou  lovedst 
me  before    the  foundation  of  the  world.     Righteous  Father! 

1  Ka^cSs  has  considerable  range  of  meaning,  and  is  used  either  in  a 
comparative  or  causal  sense ;  and  when  in  the  latter  means  according 
as,  or  because  that.  So  it  is  used  in  this  same  chapter  (verse  2),  and  in 
the  passage  cited  we  understand  Jesus  to  be  setting  forth  his  one- 
ness with  the  Father  as  the  ground,  or  procuring  cause  of  onenesii 
with  the  disciples. 


THE  yOHANNEAN  ATONEMENT,  507 

though  the  world  knew  thee  not,  I  knew  thee,  and  these  knew 
that  thou  didst  send  me.  And  I  made  known  to  them  thy 
name  and  will  make  it  known ;  that  the  love  wherewith  thou 
hast  loved  me  may  be  in  them  and  I  in  them."  1 

Such  is  the  Christian  atonement,  as  set  forth  in  the 
divinest  language  that  ever  fell  upon  human  ears.  It 
is  God  in  Christ,  and  Christ  in  the  disciple,  so  far 
forth  as  he  yields  himself  to  Christ,  and  is  brought 
into  union  with  him  in  obedient  and  childlike  faith. 
The  Church  in  formulating  the  same  doctrine,  em- 
phasizes the  requirements  of  the  Divine  Law,  which 
Jesus  came  to  cancel  and  satisfy,  and  hence  dwells 
primarily,  and  sometimes  too  grossly  and  exclusively 
on  his  sufferings  and  death.  Let  us  not  ignore  or 
undervalue  the  great  truth  involved  in  this  formu- 
lation, which  even  in  its  grosser  apprehension  has 
brought  to  so  many  minds  a  sense  of  the  divine  for- 
giveness. It  is  all  true  that  the  sufferings  and  death 
of  Christ  were  necessary  to  satisfy  the  requirements 
of  the  Divine  Law.  Who  can  follow  on  through 
Gethsemane  to  Calvary,  and  believe  that  such  a  sacri- 
fice is  merely  to  pay  the  debt  of  our  common  mor- 
tality ;  that  there  was  not  demanded  in  fundamental 
reasons  of  the  Divine  government,  "  the  Lamb  slain 
from  the  foundation  of  the  world }  "  It  is  not  going 
beyond  the  letter  or  the  spirit  of  Scripture  to  say 
that  the  death  of  Christ  was  an  irreversible  condition 
of  human  redemption  and  salvation.  In  this  sense 
his  sufferings  and  death  were  vicarious. 

1  John  xvii.  n-26. 


508  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

But  what  do  we  mean  by  the  laws  of  God,  which 
this  great  sacrifice  was  to  satisfy  ?  Not  any  written 
statutes  or  parchment  regulations,  except  so  far  forth 
as  these  are  transcripts  of  the  eternal  principles  of 
being.  The  laws  of  God  are  the  inherent  condi- 
tions of  the  supreme  order  of  the  universe,  as  they 
pervade  all  worlds  and  all  ranks  of  existence.  That 
order  is  such  arrangement  and  such  subordination  of 
lower  to  higher,  of  special  to  general,  of  evil  to  good, 
of  the  less  good  to  the  greater,  of  natural  to  spiritual, 
as  shall  insure  the  highest  and  widest  beneficence. 
If  any  jot  or  tittle  of  these  laws  of  the  supreme  order 
were  to  fail,  no  one  can  tell  the  consequent  ruin  and 
suffering,  for  the  universe  is  conjoined  part  to  part, 
the  whole  to  each,  and  each  to  all,  by  sympathies  and 
relations  finer  and  more  pervasive  than  any  analysis 
of  ours  can  show.  These  laws  —  not  any  police  reg- 
ulations of  Moses  —  Jesus  came  not  to  destroy  but 
to  fulfill.  The  sighs  of  the  creation,  and  the  deepest 
undertones  of  nature,  and  if  we  may  believe  the 
record,  the  urgencies  of  the  angelic  worlds  them- 
selves, forecast  an  epiphany  of  God  in  humanity  at 
the  time  it  came,  and  they  felt  when  they  could  not 
articulate  the  exigencies  of  the  hour.  The  benefits 
of  that  coming,  for  aught  we  know,  might  extend  to 
other  worlds  as  well  as  this.  It  might  have  been 
necessary  in  order  to  subordinate  hell,  in  order  to 
preserve  the  heavens  and  keep  them  clean,  not  less 
than  to  redeem  the  earth,  which  is  the  substructure 


THE  JOIIANNEAN  ATONEMENT.  509 

and  support  of  the  heavens  themselves,  that  God 
should  be  in  Last  things  as  well  as  First  things,  and 
so  become  all  in  all.  The  Word  become  man  in 
Jesus  Christ.  His  life  on  the  earth,  his  death,  resur- 
rection, ascension,  and  coming  again  in  the  Paraclete, 
with  new  regenerating  power,  were  alike  the  fulfill- 
ment of  these  laws  of  the  supreme  order,  through 
which  alone  God  could  yield  himself  to  his  creation, 
and  redeem  it  and  glorify  himself  in  it,  while  the 
essential  principles  of  our  manhood  are  still  pre- 
served. An  angel  might  have  descended  and  pro- 
claimed the  abstract  truths  of  the  Gospel  from  the 
tops  of  the  mountains,  and  then  disappeared  with 
dissolving  views  into  heaven ;  but  who  does  not  see 
that  the  truths,  like  the  lovely  vision,  would  have 
melted  away.  God  must  come  into  this  world  in  such 
wise  as  to  take  hold  of  it  and  save  it,  the  elements  of 
human  nature  and  the  laws  of  action  upon  it  being 
such  as  we  find  them  ;  and  this  could  not  be  unless 
He  made  himself  a  partaker  of  our  nature,  drawing 
up  into  his  consciousness  by  divine  sympathies  the 
wants  and  sufierings  of  ours. 

All  this  we  get  gleams  of  as  this  great  subject  of 
the  atonement  unfolds  its  mysteries,  and  we  learn  it 
m  all  its  relations.  Undoubtedly  my  intellect  would 
be  gratified  if  I  could  see  those  relations  all  complete, 
^nd  know  the  Lamb  as  "  slain  from  the  foundation  of 
the  world."  Here,  however,  is  not  where  this  subject 
touches  me  savingly  and  vitally.     That  is  through 


5IO  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

my  relations  to  the  Christ,  received  not  as  a  mere 
man  but  as  God  with  us,  so  as  to  make  me  a  branch 
of  the  Vine  into  which  the  Divine  Life  perennially 
flows.  When  I  have  this  I  have  the  daily  fulfillment 
of  the  promise,  "  Thou  Father  art  in  me  and  I  in 
thee,  that  they  may  be  in  us,  that  the  world  may 
believe  that  thou  didst  send  me."  By  this  I  may  be 
brought  into  such  daily  communion  with  God,  and 
fellowship  of  his  Spirit,  that  it  shows  me  what  I  am 
and  what  I  need  ;  shows  all  my  sins  in  contrast  with 
his  own  dazzling  purity,  helps  me  to  acknowledge 
and  repudiate  them,  and  lay  their  whole  burden  upon 
Him  as  his  care  and  no  longer  mine.  Then  comes 
the  assurance  of  forgiveness,  and  the  peace  of  God 
flows  in  like  a  river  clear  and  tranquil.  For  it  is  one 
of  the  paradoxes  of  the  Christian  experience  that  the 
more  fully  our  sins  are  revealed  within  us,  the  more 
perfect  and  well  assured  is  the  peace  that  comes  ;  and 
when  they  loom  blackest  and  most  sharply  defined 
against  the  clear  blue  of  the  heavens  beyond  them, 
we  know  that  a  power  mightier  than  they  is  working 
in  us  and  taking  up  our  burden  for  us,  that  they  may 
not  trouble  us  any  more.  What  multitudes  have 
found  not  only  rest  but  everlasting  joy  at  the  feet  of 
Jesus  Christ,  simply  by  giving  themselves  away  to 
him  in  an  unbounded  trust,  who  never  tried  to  ex- 
cogitate the  methods  of  the  atonement,  or  those  eter- 
nal laws  of  being  which  it  fulfills  !  In  spiritual  things 
as  in  natural,  the  law  of  demand  and  supply  is  sure  in 


THE  JOHANNEAN  A  TONEMENT.  5  1 1 

its  operations  and  its  last  results.  What  we  want 
in  Christ  we  always  find  in  him.  When  we  want 
nothing  we  find  nothing.  When  we  want  Uttle  we 
find  little.  When  we  want  much  we  find  much.  But 
when  we  want  everything,  and  get  reduced  to  com- 
plete nakedness  and  beggary,  we  find  in  him  God's 
complete  treasure-house,  out  of  which  come  gold  and 
jewels  and  garments  to  clothe  us,  wavy  in  the  rich- 
ness and  glory  of  the  Lord. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

CONVERGING   LINES. 

MORE  than  fifty  years  of  controversy  have  been 
waged  in  New  England  between  Trinitarian- 
ism  and  Unitarianism,  as  if  they  were  two  conflict- 
ing forms  of  Christianity.  In  this  warfare  Trinita- 
rianism  has  been  opposed  as  if  it  were  both  tritheism 
and  idolatry  ;  and  Unitarianism  has  been  opposed  as 
if  it  were  a  denial  of  Jesus  Christ  and  a  rejection  of 
his  authority.  That  these  mutual  charges  and  im- 
putations are  both  true  and  false,  could  be  proved 
abundantly  by  citations  from  the  writings  on  both 
sides.  Trinitarianism  may  be  held  and  explicated  as 
the  worship  of  three  gods,  or  it  may  be  held  as  the 
purest  theism.  We  believe  it  has  been  held  as  both. 
Unitarianism  may  be  held  as  conserving  both  the 
unity  of  God  and  the  divinity  of  Christ,  or  it  may 
merge  both  these  doctrines  in  sheer  pantheism,  and 
ose  the  historical  Christ  altogether.  It  has  had  all 
this  range,  and  has  it  to-day. 

At  the  same  time  Christianity,  as  God's  all-re- 
vealing Word  and  his  final  achievement  in  human 
nature,  has  a  unitizing  power  more  manifest  from 
age  to  age.     The  Paraclete  which  it  promised  and 


CONVERGING  LINES,  513 

which  it  ever  brings,  ought  to  melt  down  artificial 
distinctions,  and  develop  amid  all  this  diversity  an 
increasing  and  controlling  CathoHcity.  Christianity 
was  given  to  mankind  in  a  state  not  much  removed 
from  barbarism  ;  and  to  say  that  clouds  gathered 
about  it,  drawn  from  human  conceit  and  earthliness, 
is  only  saying  that  it  did  not  turn  the  earth  by  magic 
into  Paradise.  At  the  same  time  we  should  expect 
the  obscuring  clouds  to  grow  lighter,  and  finally  dis- 
solve. And  so  they  do.  Two  great  facts  are  note- 
worthy. Jesus  Christ,  as  given  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  in  the  consciousness  of  the  Church,  ever 
growing  deeper  and  clearer,  is  the  guide  of  the  na- 
tions to-day.  The  statistics  show  it.  The  denomi- 
nations which  receive  Christ,  not  as  the  self-develop- 
ment of  human  nature,  eighteen  hundred  years  ago, 
but  as  the  opening  down  of  God  to  man,  and  of 
heaven  to  earth,  at  this  hour,  are  spreading  and  grow- 
ing, and  their  ratio  of  increase  is  higher  than  that  of 
the  population.  Faith  in  Christ,  as  the  great  want  of 
man  and  the  renewing  power  of  a  fallen  world,  waxes 
but  never  wanes.  This  is  one  fact,  we  say,  which  the 
statistics  of  the  denominations  carefuly  collated  clearly 
reveal.  And  there  is  another,  which  may  not  be 
within  the  reach  of  statistics,  but  concerning  which 
we  presume  the  reader  will  have  no  shadow  of 
doubt.  It  is  this  :  —  the  denominations  are  becom- 
ing more  fully  possessed  with  the  mind  and  spirit  of 
Christ.  If  you  doubt  it  compare  the  present  century 
33 


514  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

with  the  last,  or  compare  the  modern  with  the  medi- 
aeval ages  as  pertains  to  the  golden  fruits  of  a  true 
faith,  righteousness,  charity,  brotherhood,  and  uni- 
versal love.  The  beatitudes  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  the  humanities  of  the  sermon  on  Mount  Oli- 
vet, and  the  love  that  breathes  through  the  Johan- 
nean  discourses,  never  beat  with  more  tender  pulses 
than  now,  to  move  and  inspire  all  the  ecclesiasti- 
cisms  of  the  Christian  world.  Worthier  and  love- 
lier views  of  the  divine  character  and  attributes ;  zeal 
for  Christ  purged  of  all  bitterness  from  the  gall  of 
the  unregenerate  heart ;  tolerance  of  error  in  opinion  ; 
intolerance  of  wrong  to  any  child  of  God,  or  of  cru- 
elty to  any  creature  He  has  made  ;  better  theories  of 
human  nature  and  destiny ;  and  better  feelings  of 
human  fellowship  that  make  every  man,  not  only  the 
image  of  God  but  the  image  of  every  other  man, — 
these  mark  the  advent  of  Christ,  as  John  foresaw  it, 
—  Christianity  displacing  at  length  the  old  Judaism 
and  heathenism,  as  the  New  Jerusalem  coming  down 
from  God  out  of  heaven.  The  unbelievers  who  assail 
Christianity  now  must  go  back  into  the  centuries, 
where  they  find  it  as  corrupted  and  overlaid  by  the 
Judaism  or  Paganism,  through  which  it  was  melt- 
ing its  way,  not  as  it  breaks  through  them  from  the 
face  of  the  Christ  himself  True,  it  is  not  yet  en- 
tirely cleared  of  them,  for  they  are  "  the  old  man  with 
his  lusts "  that  lurks  in  all  our  hearts,  but  the  mis- 
sions, the  charities,  the  self-sacrifice,  the  faith  in  God 


CONVERGING  LINES.  515 

the  hope  of  man,  and  the  deeper  tenderness  that 
beats  through  them  all,  are  the  inspiration  of  the 
Christ  always  coming  in  his  kingdom.  If  you  doubt 
this,  strike  out  that  name  and  the  faiths  organically 
connected  with  it ;  faiths  which  make  man  an  immor- 
tal being,  to  be  cared  for  as  such,  and  not  an  animal, 
to  be  fed  and  dressed  for  this  world  only  ;  faiths  which 
give  the  Paraclete  as  the  inspiration  of  our  work-day 
songs  and  our  visions  of  heaven  at  the  dying  hour, 
—  strike  these  out  and  leave  every  man  to  his  own 
guessings  and  intuitions,  and  how  speedily  would  our 
beneficent  Christian  enterprises  collapse  and  die  ! 
The  living  Christ,  we  say,  leads  and  inspires  the 
thought  of  all  our  advancement  to-day.  Any  reform 
that  meets  with  tolerable  success,  succeeds,  because 
the  Christ  is  in  it,  showing  the  worth  of  man  as  an 
immortal  being,  the  child  of  a  universal  Father  and 
the  member  of  a  universal  brotherhood,  his  fellow- 
ship being  not  of  earth  and  time  only,  but  of  the 
glorified  in  heaven  as  well,  whose  sympathies  draw 
us  mightily  upward,  and  whose  "  Come  up  hither  ! " 
ever  falls  down  to  cheer  us.  There  is  not  a  denomi- 
nation of  Christendom,  whose  literature  we  are  ac- 
quainted with,  which  does  not  show  that  the  Spirit  is 
coming  within  them  with  greater  fullness  and  tender- 
ness, making  their  theologies  fluid  in  the  love  of 
Christ,  as  they  reflect  from  his  face  in  softer  light 
the  Beatitudes  which  he  spake  and  lived. 

All  this  being  so,  another  consequence  inevitably. 


5l6  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

follows.  We  cannot  move  towards  the  Christ  with- 
out coming  closer  to  each  other.  Leave  out  him  and 
his  unitizing  Word,  and  let  every  man  strike  out  for 
himself,  and  we  tend  to  a  crumbling  individualism,  to 
endless  distraction  and  confusion.  But  those  who 
acknowledge  Jesus  Christ  as  the  supreme  authority 
and  guide,  and  enter  more  into  his  all-revealing  mind, 
are  making  progress  towards  the  harmonizing  truths 
which  he  represents.  However  wide  apart  they  may 
be  at  the  start,  their  progress  is  ever  on  converging 
lines.  Essential  truth  becomes  more  and  more  central 
and  manifest,  the  non-essential  falls  away  to  its  sub- 
ordinate place,  and  orthodox  and  unorthodox  move 
alike  towards  a  higher  and  higher  unity.  It  is  not 
that  any  one  sect  is  making  a  conquest  of  the  others, 
but  Jesus  Christ  is  making  a  conquest  of  us  all. 

Some  time  ago  Professor  Stuart  declared  in  the 
name  of  Trinitarian  orthodoxy,  that  it  did  not  teach 
three  persons  in  the  Godhead,  in  the  sense  in  which 
Unitarians  interpret  that  phraseology ;  that  Trini- 
tarians did  not  use  the  word  person  in  its  modern 
acceptation,  but  to  indicate  a  distinction  in  the 
Divine  Nature,  which  they  did  not  pretend  to  under- 
stand, and  that  the  word  "  person  "  was  only  employed 
on  account  of  the  poverty  of  language.  And  because 
of  this  liability  to  misconstruction,  the  word  has  been 
dropped  from  many  declarations  of  faith.  Several 
orthodox  creeds  are  before  us,  some  of  them  of  large 
representative  churches,  which  read,  "  We  believe  in 


CONVERGING  LINES.  517 

one  God,  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit,"  leaving  the 
interpretation  of  these  Bible  words  to  the  Christian 
believer,  as  God  shall  reveal  himself  in  the  clarified 
consciousness,  so  that  the  divine  threeness  shall  not 
conflict  with  the  divine  unity. 

That  the  worship  of  Christ  may  be  and  often  is 
idolatrous  worship  ;  that  it  is  the  exaltation  of  the 
creature  to  the  place  of  the  Creator,  of  a  finite  suffer- 
ing man  to  the  place  of  God,  we  are  by  no  means 
disposed  to  deny.  We  suppose  it  inevitable  that 
many  minds  cling  to  the  mere  finite  without  rising 
clearly  out  of  it.  But  we  have  no  right  to  bring  this 
as  a  sweeping  charge  against  the  orthodox  denomina- 
tions, as  many  persons  do.  Those  who  make  these 
charges  ignore  the  distinction  which  orthodoxy  has 
always  made  in  its  doctrine  of  "the  hypostatic  union," 
the  more  interior  union  in  Christ  of  the  infinite  and 
the  finite.  Christ  as  an  object  of  prayer  and  of 
divine  honors,  stands  for  nothing  finite  and  mortal  to 
the  mind  of  any  intelligent  worshipper,  but  rather  for 
the  Divine  Logos,  of  which  the  finite  sufiering  hu- 
manity was  but  symbol  and  scaffolding.  To  bring 
down  the  Christ  within  our  human  dimensions,  and 
then  project  our  shriveled  conception  into  the  creeds 
of  our  neighbors,  and  charge  them  with  worshipping 
the  Christ  as  we  have  constructed  him,  is  not  the 
device  of  truthful  and  honorable  controversy.  As  the 
Mediator  through  whom  alone  the  soul  has  been 
irawn  up  into  the  embrace  of  the  divine  love,  what 


5l8  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

multitudes  there  are,  both  Trinitarian  and  Unitarian, 
who  would  say  with  tearful  thanksgivings,  "  All  I 
know  of  God  is  bound  up  in  that  name." 

There  is  no  ground  for  the  charge  of  idolatry 
against  those  who  worship  God  under  the  name  of 
Christ,  from  that  fact  alone,  any  more  than  there  is 
against  the  Naturalist,  who  sees  God  through  the 
symbols  of  nature.  The  Naturalist,  if  a  theist,  sees  in 
Nature  God  revealing  himself,  and  he  stands  amid 
her  blaze  of  magnificence,  and  adores.  Am  I  to  turn 
upon  him,  and  charge  him  with  Fetishism,  with  wor- 
shipping stones,  and  trees,  and  mountains,  and  not 
rather  enter  into  his  thought,  in  which  stones,  trees, 
and  mountains,  and  the  whole  range  of  finite  objects, 
are  seen  as  the  exponents  of  forces  that  lie  within 
them  and  behind  them,  and  these  again  resolved  into 
the  ground-force  of  all  which  is  the  adorable  and 
eternal  One.  No  catalogue  of  finite  objects,  however 
classified,  exhausts  your  conception  of  Nature.  It 
implies  some  power  that  lies  within  and  behind  them. 
If  you  ascribe  to  this  power  self-consciousness  and 
personality,  you  are  a  theist  and  worship  this  power 
as  God.  But  I  should  grossly  belie  your  thought  if 
I  charged  you  with  making  deities  of  finite  objects, 
whether  stones  and  trees,  or  suns  and  stars,  or 
men  and  women.  Just  as  grossly  do  you  misrepre- 
sent the  Christian  theist,  when  you  charge  him  with 
worshipping  a  creature  when  he  worships  God  in 
Christ.     He  forewarns  you  that  while  he  sees  Jesus 


CONVERGING  LINES.  519 

the  perfected  man,  finite,  suffering,  dying,  he  sees 
also  the  Eternal  Word,  that  same  Power  which  you 
see  in  nature.  He  sees  it  as  he  believes  no  longer 
dimly,  but  clothed  in  all  the  attributes  of  Divine 
Fatherhood,  and  of  our  own  humanity  in  infinite  de- 
gree ;  coming  into  the  world  through  a  more  perfect 
and  open  way  than  that  of  nature,  in  order  to  take 
man's  spiritual  burdens  upon  himself,  purify  his  child, 
and  raise  him  up  to  the  Divine  communion.  This  is 
what  he  worships  in  Christ.  He  no  more  worships 
a  finite  and  suffering  man  when  he  worships  God  in 
Christ,  than  you  worship  stones,  trees,  and  moun- 
tains when  you  worship  God  in  nature.  But  in  a 
man  though  finite  and  suffering,  yet  unstained  by  sin, 
in  a  humanity  not  partial  and  one-sided  but  in  com- 
plete and  majestic  proportions,  and  in  which  the  Eter- 
nal Word  is  become  man,  he  thinks  he  has  access 
to  the  Godhead  in  his  warm  glories,  and  his  forgiv- 
ing and  cleansing  love,  such  as  you  can  never  have 
through  material  nature,  nor  yet  in  a  humanity  foul 
with  the  stains  of  moral  corruption. 

Between  Unitarianism  as  Channing  held  it,  and 
Trinitarianism,  as  Stuart  held  it,  plainly  the  contro- 
versy ought  to  cease,  as  regards  this  single  doctrine 
of  the  Divine  Unity.  In  other  respects,  in  details  of 
doctrine,  doubtless,  the  two  systems  greatly  differ ; 
but  both  tend  to  a  sublimer  unity  in  the  Christ  where 
artificial  distinctions  have  fallen  down.  Channing'sf 
prime  objection  to  creeds  was  that  they  come  between 


520  THE   FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

the  disciple  and  his  Lord,  and  so  are  a  hindrance  to 
progress  He  believed  that  Christianity  as  yet  had 
been  but  half  apprehended  ;  that  orthodox  and  het- 
erodox alike  were  in  the  beggarly  elements,  and 
that  their  true  progress  lay  not  away  from  Christ,  but 
towards  Him.  He  seems  to  have  worshipped  God 
in  Christ,  at  least,  in  his  latest  meditations,  as  much 
as  any  orthodox  monotheist  could  consistently  do,  for 
in  his  last  public  utterance,  which  has  been  called  the 
Swan-song  of  a  Son  of  Light,  he  shows  clearly  that 
he  had  faith  in  what  orthodoxy  calls  the  "  hypostatic 
union,"  though  he  believed  it  a  doctrine  too  vast 
and  mysterious  to  be  packed  into  our  human  for- 
mulas. 

"  All  the  doctrines  of  Christianity,"  he  says,  "  are 
more  and  more  seen  to  be  bonds  of  close,  spiritual, 
reverential  union  between  man  and  man ;  and  this  is 
the  most  cheering  view  of  our  time.  Christianity  is 
a  revelation  of  the  infinite,  universal,  paternal  love  of 
God  towards  his  human  family,  comprehending  the 
most  sinful,  descending  to  the  most  fallen,  and  its 
aim  is  to  breathe  the  same  love  into  its  disciples.  It 
shows  us  Christ  tasting  death  for  every  man,  and  it 
summons  us  to  take  his  cross,  or  to  participate  of  his 
sufferings  in  the  same  cause.  Its  doctrine  of  im- 
mortality gives  infinite  worth  to  every  human  being, 
for  every  one  is  destined  to  this  endless  life.  The 
doctrine  of  the  Word  made  flesh '  shows  us  God 
uniting  Himself  most   intimately  zuith   our  7iature 


CONVERGING  LINES.  $21 

manifesthig  himself  hi  a  human  form,  for  the  very 
end  of  making  us  partakers  of  his  own  perfec- 
tion." 1 

When  the  denominations  have  done  with  the  hu- 
man creeds,  and  trust  aUke  to  the  Word  made  flesh, 
they  will  meet  together  not  by  any  compromise  of 
opinions  but  in  due  course  of  Christian  progress  ; 
not  on  any  field  of  past  controversy,  but  on  those 
higher  planes  of  thought  where  the  beams  of  truth, 
once  refracted  and  separated,  are  gathered  and  re- 
united into  one  ray  of  white  light  which  reflects  the 
sun  in  his  original  brightness.  Theologians  are  evan- 
escent and  soon  pass  away.  But  the  Word  of  God 
remains.  A  church  founded  upon  it,  such  as  Chan- 
ning  dreamed  of  and  prayed  for,  fettered  by  no  hu- 
man interpretations  but  gathered  only  around  him,  in 
whom,  to  quote  Channing's  words,  "  the  fullness  of 
Divinity  dwells,"  has  all  the  future  for  its  inheritance 
with  none  of  the  effete  dogmas  of  the  past ;  it  may 
grow  forever  into  the  more  perfect  form  and  body  of 
Christ  till  he  lives  in  all  its  functions  ;  its  differences 
will  be  only  as  surface  waves,  while  its  unity  of  spirit 
will  be  as  the  deep,  still  currents  beneath. 

Experience  thus  far  has  shown  that  all  attempts 
at  progress  by  leaving  out  the  Christ,  have  resulted 

1  This  is  from  Dr.  Channing's  address  at  Lenox,  his  last  public 
utterance.  But  it  must  not  be  inferred  from  this  emphatic  language, 
that  he  had  adopted  any  received  theory  of  the  nature  of  Christ.  We 
gather  elsewhere  from  his  writings  that  he  considered  himsel/  a 
learner  to  the  last. 


522  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

in  retrogression,  not  in  a  new  unfolding  of  the  wealth 
of  the  Gospel ;  that  all  movement  out  of  the  circle 
and  beyond  the  influence  of  the  personalities  of  the 
Bible,  is  not  into  the  light  that  burns  warmer  and 
clearer.  No  foothold,  that  we  can  see,  has  ever  been 
found,  but  one  exceedingly  slippery,  between  the  nat- 
uralism that  makes  Christ  a  normal  development  of 
our  nature,  and  the  supernaturalism  that  asserts  his 
essential  Divinity.  If  we  deny  the  latter,  the  whole 
New  Testament  must  be  reconstructed  and  vast 
portions  of  it  expunged,  and  the  Tubingen  critics  are 
right.  Their  method  is  the  true  one,  and  it  depends 
on  individual  taste  and  idiosyncrasy,  how  much  shall 
be  expunged  and  how  much  shall  be  left,  and  whether 
anything.  Not  only  so,  but  Christian  history  for 
eighteen  hundred  years  has  been  developed  from 
shadows,  and  the  glorified  company  of  saints  have 
fed  on  husks  that  had  no  corn  within  them. 

But  why  not  teach  the  great  truths  of  universal 
religion,  God  and  the  Holy  Spirit  and  immortality 
and  the  duties  of  love  to  God  and  love  to  man  with- 
out any  other  authority  than  the  truths  themselves  } 
Because  these  words,  —  God,  the  Holy  Spirit,  and 
Immortality,  —  within  the  circle  of  Christian  ideas 
and  personalities  are  fraught  with  a  meaning  which 
they  can  never  lose,  but  which  grows  more  full  and 
sufficing  with  all  Christian  progress  ;  whereas  outside 
that  circle  the  meaning  leaks  out  of  them  all  the  while, 
till  they  hang  empty  and  float  in  air.     No  one  who 


CONVERGING  LINES  523 

receives  the  Christ  of  the  New  Testament  history, 
can  lose  faith  in  the  personal  fatherhood  of  God, 
in  his  universal  providence,  in  the  Holy  Spirit  as  an 
effusive  energy  coming  from  above  man  to  find  him 
and  renew  him,  in  the  existence  of  an  angel-world, 
and  in  man  as  created  for  its  abodes.  Not  only  so, 
but  these  truths  grow  upon  him  and  become  the  ever 
brightening  scenery  of  his  mind.  On  the  other  hand, 
outside  the  circle  of  Christian  ideas  and  personal- 
ities, they  freeze  into  abstractions,  or  fade  off  alto- 
gether, till  God  sinks  into  an  impersonal  force,  and 
the  spirit-world  is  swamped  in  the  natural.  If  the 
idea  of  God,  as  held  by  such  men  as  Herbert  Spen- 
cer, and  by  men  of  equal  ability  nearer  home,  gets 
the  essential  qualities  of  a  Divine  Fatherhood  strained 
out  of  it,  leaving  only  an  unknowable  force  for  the 
evolution  of  phenomena,  what  reason  have  we  to 
suppose  that  churches,  founded  not  on  Jesus  Christ 
but  on  individual  intuitions,  may  not  exist  with  all  the 
forms  and  titles  of  Christian  theism,  while  all  Chris- 
tian thought  is  leaking  out  of  its  words  and  rituals  ? 
There  are  "  liberal  Christians  "  among  all  sects ; 
those,  that  is,  who  believe  that  Christianity  is  not  yet 
learned  out,  that  it  is  to  have  an  auspicious  future, 
since  the  hard  features  of  the  old  creeds  are  softening 
and  the  old  lines  of  division  grow  indistinct.  These 
changes,  as  we  read  the  signs,  come  not  mainly  from 
our  controversies,  nor  from  any  visible  appliances 
whatsoever.      They  come  from  the  profounder  cur- 


524  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

rents  of  the  Spirit  within,  which  is  bearing  all  of  us, 
Trinitarians  and  Unitarians  alike,  towards  higher 
realms  of  truth,  and  towards  a  more  comprehending 
unity.  This  current  sets  not  away  from  Jesus  Christ 
and  his  Word,  but  toward  larger  views  of  both.  The 
yearnings  of  this  age,  as  we  interpret  them  and  as 
uttered  out  of  the  deepest  wants  of  human  nature, 
reach  in  this  direction. 

In  America,  the  great  denominations  that  move 
on  with  renewed  vigor  to  the  work  of  Christian  civ- 
ilization and  education,  do  not  make  their  theologies 
less  Christian  but  more  so,  and  the  Christ  in  them 
gives  to  them  both  their  aggressive  power  and  their 
inspiring  song.  The  antichristian  Rationalism  has 
not  shown  itself  the  advanced  thought  of  the  times, 
but  the  very  smallest  among  the  reflex  eddies  under 
the  lee  shore,  while  the  vast  current  of  the  world's 
progress  is  sweeping  grandly  by.  We  can  be  set 
back  on  one  of  these  side-eddies  if  we  will,  and 
then  the  other  Christian  bodies,  advancing  with  the 
ideas  which  we  shall  have  abandoned,  will  do  the 
work  which  we  ought  to  have  done,  —  or  as  we  pray 
and  believe  will  be  the  case,  we  can  be  true  to  our 
historic  urgencies  and  pledges,  and  then  it  is  plain  to 
see  there  is  a  point  not  far  off  in  the  distance,  where 
we  shall  see  the  triumph  of  the  divinest  of  all  Unita- 
rianism  :  "  I  in  them  and  thou  in  me  that  they  may  be 
made  perfect  in  one,  and  that  the  world  may  believe 
that  thou  hast  sent  me." 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  THRONES  IN  HEAVEN.  —  CONCLUSION. 

"  T  SAW  thrones,"  says  the  seer  of  the  Apocalypse 
J-  when  describing  the  ritual  of  heaven.  They 
appear  in  gradation  rank  above  rank ;  and  three  grades 
are  distinguished.  There  is  the  throne  of  the  Su- 
preme, who  sits  thereon  encircled  with  rainbows,  and 
the  worshippers  rest  not  day  and  night,  saying,  Holy, 
holy,  holy  Lord  God  Almighty,  which  was  and  is  and 
is  to  come."  There  is  the  throne  of  the  Lamb,  who 
receives  homage  almost  as  great,  who  draws  around 
him  the  alleluiahs  of  every  creature  which  is  in  heaven 
and  on  the  earth  and  in  the  under  world  and  in  the 
sea,  whose  name  is  coupled  with  that  of  God  in  re- 
ceiving adoration  ;  who  sitteth  down  on  the  throne 
of  God,  or  who  is  "  in  the  midst  of  the  throne  ;  "  so 
that  the  same  throne  is  called  "  the  throne  of  God 
and  the  Lamb."  The  same  divine  predicates  are  ap- 
plied to  him  as  to  the  Almighty,  "  Alpha  and  Omega, 
tb.e  Beginning  and  Ultimation,  the  First  and  the 
Last,"  and  he  feeds  the  saints  from  the  midst  of  the 
throne,  and  judges  the  sinners  who  hide  under  rocks 
from  "  the  wrath  of  the  Lamb."  There  is  a  third 
and  lower  rank  of  thrones  :  those  of  the  twenty-four 


526  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 

elders,  thrones  of  judgment  for  the  redeemed  who 
are  to  reign  with  Christ ;  and  the  promise  is  given 
that  as  Christ  sits  down  with  the  Father  on  God's 
throne,  so  the  saints  shall  sit  down  with  Christ  on 
his  throne. 

The  reader  knows  very  well  what  the  literalists 
make  of  all  this.  It  is  the  worship  of  a  created  being, 
so  great  and  so  exalted,  that  he  sits  on  the  throne 
of  the  Almighty,  and  receives  a  worship  such  as  no 
enlightened  pagan  ever  gave  to  inferior  divinities. 
But  it  is  not  supreme  worship,  they  say,  but  analo- 
gous to  the  homage  paid  to  sovereigns  and  magis- 
trates, only  more  magnificent,  as  to  one  more  wor- 
thy ;  for  does  he  not  promise  the  same  in  kind  to  his 
saints  who  are  to  sit  with  him  on  thrones  of  judgment  .-^ 

And  what  is  the  judgment-seat  of  Christ  to  which 
his  saints  are  invited  }  Turn  to  Matthew,  twenty- 
fifth  chapter,  and  we  shall  see.  The  Son  of  Man 
comes  in  glory  to  summon  all  peoples  to  his  bar, 
sits  on  the  throne  of  his  glory,  and  separates  the 
saints  from  the  sinners,  —  those  to  eternal  life  and 
these  to  eternal  punishment.  A  singular  judicial 
process,  if  the  saints  themselves  are  on  the  throne  of 
judgment  and  not  at  the  judgment  bar ! 

This  imagery  of  the  Apocalypse  only  puts  into 
concrete  and  objective  form  the  figurative  language 
of  Christ  in  the  Gospels.  When  events  were  moving 
on  to  their  crisis,  Peter  came  to  Jesus  with  the  ques- 
tion,  "  Behold,  we  have  forsaken   all   and   followed 


THE  THRONES  IN  HE  A  VEN.  —  CONCL  USION.     5  2/ 

thee,  what  shall  we  have  therefore  ? "  Jesus  assures  his 
Apostles  in  reply  :  "  When  the  Son  of  Man  shall  sit  in 
the  throne  of  his  glory,  ye  also  shall  sit  upon  twehe 
thrones  judging  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel."   The  am- 
bition of  two  of  them  took  fire  at  the  prospect.    They 
wanted  the  highest  thrones,  one  on  the  right  and  one 
on  the  left  of  Christ ;  and  soon  after  this  they  came 
with  their  mother  secretly  and  applied  for  such  pro- 
motion.    What  was  the  answer  of  Jesus  t      One  of 
the  most  solemn  rebukes  of  human  ambition  which  it 
ever  received,  and  one  of  the  most  touching  lessons 
of  humility   and   self-sacrifice:     "Whoever  will   be 
chief  among  you  let  him  be  your  servant.     Even  as 
the  Son  of  Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but 
to  minister."  Has  Jesus  left  these  lessons  behind,  and 
gone  into  the  heavens,  thence  to  address  a  more  po- 
tent stimulus  to  our  mean  selfishness  or   our   pom- 
pous vanities,  than   the   empty   grandeurs   of  earth 
could  ever  give  ? 

When  we  undertake  to  interpret  a  symboUcal  book, 
we  should  not  mix  up  symbol  and  letter  into  a  jumble. 
We  have  seen  into  what  a  slough  of  insane  nonsense 
the  Apocalypse  may  thus  be  turned.  But  keep  con- 
stantly to  its  symbolic  meaning,  and  though  we  may 
not  be  drawn  up  to  its  sublime  heights  of  vision, 
we  shall  have  the  same  serene  and  blissful  openings, 
that  are  given  us  in  the  fourth  Gospel. 

Persons  in  the  Apocalypse,  and  the  imagery  amid 
which  they  appear,  very  often  symbolize  truths  in  a 


528  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

connected  series  ;  even  Christianity,  as  a  system  of 
truth,  in  its  power  of  judging,  regenerating,  and 
saving  mankind.  What  are  the  apostohc  thrones  ? 
Seats  raised  aloft  with  the  fishermen  of  GaHlee  robed 
royally  and  sitting  thereon,  as  \he  judges  of  their 
fellow  men,  they  to  whom  the  injunction  first 
came,  —  Judge  not  that  ye  be  not  judged  ?  Not 
at  all ;  but  the  apostolic  truths  which  they  repre- 
sented, applied  in  their  royal  power  to  subdue  and 
save,  and  beneath  which  those  twelve  men  have 
learned  by  this  time  to  bring  themselves  in  lowly 
self-surrender.  And  what  is  the  worship  of  "  God 
and  the  Lamb  } "  Is  it  the  worship  of  a  created,  de- 
pendent being,  receiving  the  alleluiahs  of  the  uni- 
verse while  seated  on  the  throne  of  God  }  Is  this  the 
worship  received  by  a  man  who  came  to  teach  humil- 
ity, and  whose  last  office  on  earth  was  washing  his 
disciples'  feet  .-*  Is  it  the  kind  of  worship  we  render 
to  sovereigns,  magistrates,  and  prophets  }  How  John 
himself  was  taught  to  regard  such  worship,  rendered 
not  alone  to  magistrates  and  prophets,  but  to  an  angel 
of  heaven  of  large  commission,  he  has  told  us,  for 
when  he  fell  down  to  worship  at  the  feet  of  the  angel, 
though  not  rendering  supreme  worship,  —  for  there  is 
no  intimation  that  he  mistook  the  angel  for  the  Al- 
mighty,—  he  was  promptly  rebuked,  "  See  thou  do  it 
not,  for  I  am  thy  fellow  servant  and  of  thy  brethrer. 
the  prophets,  —  Worship  God'' 

I  can  worship  neither  sovereign  nor  prophet,  nor 
^archangel  nor  any  created  bein<]^  whatever,  placed  od 


THE  THRONES  IN  HE  A  VEN  —  CONCL  US  ION.     5  29 

the  throne  of  God  and  "  in  the  midst  of  the  throne," 
and  my  conviction  is  still  the  same,  that  if  Christi- 
anity demands  this  of  me  it  is  as  gross  a  system  of 
idolatry  as  can  be  found  among  the  religions  of  the 
earth.      The  Greeks  who  worshipped  Apollo  under 
Zeus  did  not  place  their  sub-deity  so  high  as  this  ; 
did  not  make  him  the  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  Begin- 
ning and  the  Ending,  the  First  and  the  Last.    No  ;  I 
believe  all  this  worship  is  rendered  to  the  Logos  of 
God  who  appeared  as  the  Son  of  Man  ;  to  God  speak- 
ing, or  humanized  to  our  finite  conceptions  and  our 
deepest  spiritual  needs.      It  is  the  Word  which  was 
in  the  beginning  with  God,  which  is  God  in  self-reve- 
lation, which  is  ever  on  the  throne  of  judgment,  and 
which  by  his  unerring  truth  will  judge  the  world  at 
the  last  day  ;  and  who  moreover  ever  brings  forth  to 
us  the  wealth  of  the  Divine  Nature,  and  its  deepest 
and   tenderest   love.     Does  any  enlightened  person 
need  to  have  it  proved  to  him,  that  "  the  Lamb  as  it 
had  been  slain,"  appearing  in  the  midst  of  the  throne 
of  God,  and  thence  feeding  those  who  hunger,  and 
leading  those  who  thirst  by  living  waters,  is  neither  a 
lamb  literally,  nor  a  man  who  had  been  put  to  death  ; 
but  the  Divine  Logos  rather,  revealing  the  Eternal 
Father  as  Sacrifice,  Mercy,  and  Love  ;  love  so  tender 
that  like  our  human  love  it  can  be  wounded,  can  bleed 
for  us,  can  give  itself  away  for  our  redemption,  yea, 
can  be  crucified  or  killed  out  from  the  impenitent  soul  ; 
love  of  which  the  sacrifice  on  Calvary  is  only  an  out- 
34 


530  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

ward  sign,  but  the  best,  the  truest,  and  the  tenderest 
which  our  earthly  annals  can  afford  ?  We  talk  of 
the  Fatherhood  of  God,  and  make  it  a  cold  and  sound- 
ing generality,  while  God  is  far  off  in  the  unknown  ; 
and  we  might  add  mother  and  nurse  or  any  other  words 
of  endearment  from  our  human  relations,  without  com- 
ing anywhere  near  to  that  experience  of  the  divine 
love  which  the  disciple  finds  in  Christ  as  the  Lamb 
of,  God  who  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world  ;  which 
made  Faber  exclaim  in  excess  of  emotion, — 

"  I  thrill  with  painful  joy,  to  find 
God's  fatherhood  so  nigh." 

I  can  see  no  reason  why  those  Unitarians  who 
receive  the  Gospel  message  in  its  integrity  should 
forego  the  power,  the  inspiration,  the  renewing  grace 
which  the  Logos  doctrine  has  ever  had  among  the 
followers  of  Christ.  As  held  by  the  early  Church  it 
does  not  impinge  in  the  least  on  the  prime  doctrine 
of  Unitarian  theology, —  the  essential  oneness  of  the 
Divine  Nature.^  It  has  commended  Orthodoxy  to 
myriads  of  hearts  and  minds  which  draw  this  from 
it  as  its  central  and  vital  power ;  and  I  doubt  not 
multitudes  who  are  not  called  orthodox  are  in  tacit 
acknowledgment  of  the  same  truth,  but  who  would 
shrink  from  any  fixed  formulation  of  it,  because  hu- 
man symbols  are  too  poor  for  it.  Between  orthodox 
and  unorthodox  alike,  it  would  be  a  bond  of  vital 
fellowship,  giving  them  beneath  all  other  forms  and 

1  See  the  Appendix  D 


THE  THRONES  IN  HE  A  VEN.  —  CONCL  USION.     5  3 1 

cheologies,  however  diverse,  a  common  experience  of  a 
Saviour's  deepest  and  tenderest  love.  It  would,  as  we 
believe,  invest  every  communion  table  with  the  almost 
visible  presence  of  a  Divine  Redeemer  and  with  the 
very  fragrancy  of  heaven,  for  its  worship  would  blend 
joyously  with  the  worship  around  "  the  throne  of  God 
and  the  Lamb,"  and  the  church  on  earth  and  the 
church  above  would  join  in  the  music  of  one  corona- 
tion song,  —  "  Worthy  is  the  Lamb  that  was  slain  to 
receive  power  and  riches,  and  wisdom  and  strength, 
and  honor  and  glory  and  blessing."  For  only  whe:i 
we  can  see  "  the  Lamb  in  the  midst  of  the  throne," 
have  we  come  into  the  heart  of  the  Divine  Mercy, 
where  the  throne  is  no  longer  invested  with  the  thun- 
derings  and  lightnings  of  Sinai,  but  clothed  in  rain- 
bows in  token  that  the  storms  are  over. 

The  Divine  Incarnation  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
we  conclude  to  be  the  distinguishing  doctrine  of 
the  Johannean  theology.  The  other  New  Testament 
writers  forecast  it  or  reach  towards  it,  and  sometimes 
grasp  it,  but  it  beams  forth  in  John  as  the  sun  of  the 
whole  Christian  system,  showing  all  its  other  truths  in 
organic  relations  with  it.  Shall  we  not  say  too  that 
all  the  other  great  religions  prophesy  towards  it  and 
find  in  it  their  fulfillment }  Could  Judaism  have 
found  its  consummation  in  anything  short  of  such  a 
Divine  Epiphany,  revealing  God  not  only  as  the  Be- 
ginning but  the  End  and  Ultimation  }   What  but  this 


532  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 

was  to  bridge  the  awful  chasm  between  the  world 
and  Jehovah  :  He  dwelHng  apart  in  his  lonely  soli- 
tudes, imposing  law  on  his  subjects  and  enforcing  it 
with  his  thunders  ?  Could  a  mere  prophet,  coming 
only  in  the  line  of  the  old  ones,  and  saying  their  mes- 
sage over  again,  have  given  any  culmination  to  the 
Jewish  history  ?  What  would  he  have  been  but  an 
earlier  Mahomet  with  his  endless  iteration  of  "  God 
is  God,"  but  with  this  other  truth,  God  is  human,  still 
withheld,  instead  of  being  given  to  the  heart  to  soften 
its  savagery  and  melt  it  down  in  the  Divine  Love  ? 
What  but  this  truth  was  Judaism,  as  we  find  it  rep- 
resented in  Philo  reaching  after  and  trying  to  clasp 
with  its  finest  tendrils  where  Philo  makes  out  two 
Jehovahs,  and  is  feeling  after  the  Logos  as  the  Son 
of  God  and  the  angel  of  his  nearer  presence  ? 

The  two  other  great  religions  of  the  world,  the 
religions  of  the  Orient,  have  spent  their  force  and 
have  no  future.  Brahmanism  is  all  centre.  God  is 
everything,  and  man  and  nature  nothing,  and  belong 
to  the  world  of  illusion.  God  is  the  Alpha  but  never 
the  Omega.  Buddhism  is  all  circumference.  It  af- 
firms nature  and  humanity,  but  God  is  lost  from  both. 
Its  Nirvmta,  though  it  promises  eternal  rest  as  the 
reward  of  self-renunciation,  still  leaves  a  vast  lactma 
as  pertains  to  a  spiritual  world.  Its  morality,  so  near 
that  of  Christianity  as  to  anticipate  its  entire  moral 
code  abuts  upon  nothing  to  give  it  support  and  inspi 
lation  ;  and  as  pertains  to  the  truths  that  inlay  tha 


THE  THRONES  IN  HE  A  VEN.  —  CONCL  USION.    533 

Christian  revelation,  it  is  only  the  deep-drawn  pensive 
sigh  of  human  nature,  towards  the  Word  made  flesh  ; 
toward  the  Christ  emerging  out  of  the  painful  void, 
and  lighting  up  both  the  spiritual  world  and  the  natural 
with  the  glories  of  the  Godhead.  Buddha  only  saw 
nature  as  a  burden  upon  the  spirit,  to  be  denied  and 
repudiated  ;  he  never  saw  nature  and  spirit  in  harmo- 
ny, one  to  be  glorified  by  the  other  ;  the  natural,  the 
clothing  of  the  spiritual,  and  God  pervading  them 
both  and  making  them  sweet  and  sacred,  by  his  trans- 
figurations. Hence  Buddhism  was  only  a  prophecy 
and  preparation  for  that  coming  which  should  give 
it  centre  as  well  as  circumference,  and  fill  its  painful 
chasm  with  divine  reality.  Its  morality,  sweet  and 
pure  as  it  is,  has  nothing  behind  it,  and  so  lacks 
any  impletion  from  the  Divine  Energy ;  and  though 
numbering  nearly  one  third  of  the  human  race  among 
its  votaries,  it  has  never  organized  any  form  of  society 
which  is  really  progressive.  As  applied  to  the  wounds 
and  sufferings  of  human  nature,  it  is  not  a  healer 
but  a  narcotic,  to  drown  for  the  time  being  the  con- 
sciousness of  pain.  "  In  the  plan  of  the  world's 
order,"  says  Bunsen,  "  it  seems  even  now  producing 
the  effect  of  a  mild  dose  of  opium  on  the  raving  or 
despairing  tribes  of  weary-hearted  Asia.  The  sleep 
lasts  long,  but  it  is  a  gentle  one,  and  who  knows  how 
near  may  be  the  dawn  of  the  resurrection  morning.^" 
And  if  the  Divine  Incarnation,  which  reveals  God 
not  only  as  the  Beginning  but  the  Ultimation,  is  a 


534 


THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL, 


truth  towards  which  all  the  old  religions  prophesy  out 
of  the  deepest  wants  of  human  nature,  so  again  the 
modern  religions  which  lead  the  world's  progress,  date 
from  it  and  draw  from  it  their  impletion  of  life  and  en- 
ergy. It  is  the  focal  centre  of  the  world's  history  and 
unitizes  the  whole.  Yea  more  ;  Origen  is  not  only 
grandly  comprehensive  but  strictly  Johannean,  when 
he  makes  Christ  as  the  Logos  the  mediating  and  aton- 
ing power  of  the  whole  universe,  angelic  as  well  as  hu- 
man. Everything  beyond  the  sphere  of  the  Divine 
Existence  is  separated  from  God,  and  impure  in  his 
sight,  and  so  Christ,  the  Eternal  Word,  is  ever  mediat- 
ing to  bring  the  universe  into  harmony  with  Him  and 
fill  it  with  Himself.  This  atoning  work,  says  Origen, 
goes  on  in  the  heavens  and  upon  the  earth,  and  the 
cross  is  only  its  outermost  earthly  sign.^  The  Word 
becoming  flesh  puts  him  as  never  before  in  fellowship 
and  correspondency  with  all  mankind,  and  his  atoning 
work  in  this  world  was  not  accomplished  by  a  sacrifice 
made  once  for  all,  but  is  ever  widening  and  will  keep 
on  till  it  fills  the  whole  orb  of  humanity.  In  more 
inspired  language  than  Origen' s,  John  describes  the 
one  event  in  the  world's  history,  which  was  to  fulfill 

^  Kai  7etp  i/ro-nov^  vnep  audpwjriucoi/  /xeu  avrhv  <fid<TK€iv  a/napTTjfjLdTWp 
yeyevaOai  davdrov,  ovk  en  Sc  virlp  &\\ov  riuhs  iraph  rhv  ^uOpooirov  e» 
afjutpT-fifxaai  yeyevrj/xevov,  oToy  virep  i.(Trp<tsVy  ouSs  rwv  Harpoov  iravrhs 
KaBapwv  ovrwv  ivdtiriov  tov  fleow,  ws  eV  t^  'la))3  av4yvtofi€v  (25,  5,)  ft  fiil 
&pa  vTrep0o\iK(iis  tovto  ^tprirai.  —  Com.  in  yoh. 

The  passage  is  quoted  by  Baur,  Versohnung^  p.  65 ;  and  absardlf 
criticized,  pp.  66,  67. 


THE  THRONES  IN  HE  A  VEN.  —  CONCL  USION.     535 

its  prophet  yearnings  and  assuage  and  finally  banish 
its  woes  :  "  Behold  the  tabernacle  of  God  is  with  men, 
and  He  will  dwell  with  them,  and  they  shall  be  his 
people,  and  God  himself  shall  be  with  them,  and  be 
their  God.  And  God  shall  wipe  away  all  tears  from 
their  eyes  ;  and  there  shall  be  no  more  death,  neither 
sorrow  nor  crying  ;  neither  shall  there  be  any  more 
pain ;  for  the  former  things  are  passed  away." 


APPENDIX. 


THE   EASTER  CONTROVERSY. 

IT  becomes  necessary  here  to  notice  an  alleged  dis- 
crepancy between  the  fourth  Gospel  and  the  synop- 
tics, touching  the  time  of  the  last  supper  and  the  cruci- 
fixion of  Christ.  The  synoptics  —  such  is  the  objection 
—  make  the  last  supper  fall  on  the  14th  of  the  Jewish 
month  Nisan,  or  on  Thursday  evening  of  Passover  week, 
and  the  crucifixion  on  the  15  th,  or  Friday ;  whereas  the 
fourth  Gospel  makes  no  mention  of  the  pascal  supper  at 
all,  but  describes  an  ordinary  meal  on  the  evening  of  the 
13th,  and  makes  the  crucifixion  fall  on  the  14th,  the  day 
following.  That  is  to  say,  the  fourth  Gospel  describes  a 
supper  on  the  evening  of  what  we  call  Wednesday,  which, 
therefore,  was  not  the  Passover,  and  places  the  crucifixion 
on  Thursday,  in  entire  inconsistency  with  the  first  three 
Gospels. 

This  supposed  discrepancy  would  be  of  less  conse- 
quence, even  if  it  had  turned  out  a  real  one,  had  not  a 
controversy  in  the  second  century  brought  it  to  bear  fa- 
tally, as  some  think,  against  the  genuineness  of  the  fourth 
Gospel.     The   controversy   was   this :  The   churches  of 


538  APPEND  TX, 

Asia  Minor  held  an  annual  festival  on  the  14th  Nisan, 
established,  as  Baur  holds,  in  commemoration  of  the  last 
supper,  —  the  Passover  meal  of  Jesus  with  his  disciples. 
At  Rome,  on  the  other  hand,  the  festival  was  held  on 
Friday  of  paschal  week,  without  any  reference  to  the  day 
of  the  month  on  which  it  might  fall,  and  the  churches  of 
Asia  Minor  were  blamed  because  they  would  not  con- 
form to  the  Roman  custom.  A  warm  controversy  arose. 
The  churches  of  Asia  Minor  appealed  in  behalf  of  their 
observance  to  apostolic  tradition,  and  especially  to  the 
authority  of  John  himself,  then  freshly  preserved  among 
them.  Therefore,  —  such  is  the  argument,  —  they  could 
not  have  regarded  the  fourth  Gospel  as  written  by  John, 
since  its  authority  is  directly  against  them.  The  fourth 
Gospel,  say  the  critics,  makes  Jesus  eat  for  the  last  time 
with  his  disciples,  ^'■before  the  feast  of  the  Passover" 
(chap.  xiii.  i),  and  describes  him  crucified  on  the  next 
day,  before  the  time  of  the  Passover  meal.  It  is  palpable 
evidence  that,  on  the  very  scene  of  John's  labors,  and 
near  to  his  times,  and  among  his  own  followers  and 
churches,  our  fourth  Gospel  was  not  known,  or  if  known, 
was  not  named  as  genuine. 

We  have  stated  the  objection  succinctly ;  but  the  rea- 
sonings which  have  grown  out  of  it,  the  arguments  and 
the  answers,  would  make  a  small  library.  It  has  em- 
ployed the  time  of  such  writers  as  Baur,  Neander,  Bleek, 
De  Wette,  Schneider,  and  Tholiick,  in  Germany ;  of  the 
best  English  theological  writers  ;  and  Mackay,  in  a  late 
treatise  assailing  the  genuineness  of  the  works  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  the  fourth  Gospel  in  particular,  fills  page 
after  page  with  this  controversy,  and  closes  in  a  tone  of 


APPENDIX.  539 

exultation  that  here  is  an  argument  which,  if  all  others  fail, 
puts  the  spuriousness  of  the  fourth  Gospel  beyond  debate. 
This  controversy  makes  it  expedient  that  we  give  a  few 
pages  to  it ;  and  there  need  be  but  few  indeed. 

The  whole  apparent  discrepancy  grows  out  of  a  con- 
fused rendering  or  reading  of  the  introductory  verses  of 
the  thirteenth  chapter  of  John.  They  are  as  follows  in 
our  English  version  :  — 

"Now,  before  the  feast  of  the  Passover,  when  Jesus 
knew  that  his  hour  was  come,  —  that  he  should  depart 
out  of  this  world,  —  having  loved  his  own,  who  were  in 
the  world,  he  loved  them  unto  the  end.  And,  supper  be- 
ing ended,  the  devil  having  put  it  into  the  heart  of  Judas 
Iscariot,  Simon's  son,  to  betray  him,  Jesus  knowing  that 
the  Father  had  given  all  things  into  his  hands,  and  that 
he  was  come  from  God  and  went  to  God,  he  riseth  from 
supper  and  laid  aside  his  garments,  and  took  a  towel  and 
girded  himself"  (xiii.  1-4). 

Though  a  tolerably  literal  rendering,  the  passage  as  it 
stands,  is  obscure  and  ungrammatical.  The  important 
question  is,  Does  the  clause,  "  before  the  feast  of  the  Pass- 
over," refer  to  the  supper  described  soon  after.?  The 
Tubingen  critics  say  it  does.  Therefore  it  must  have  been 
a  supper  of  a  private  nature,  and  not  the  Passover  meal 
which  it  preceded.  Therefore,  according  to  the  fourth 
Gospel,  Jesus  never  ate  the  Passover  at  all,  but  only  a 
private  meal  beforehand,  and  being  crucified  the  next  day, 
it  must  have  been  on  Thursday,  thus  directly  contradict- 
ing the  synoptics,  who  make  it  fall  on  Friday. 

Plainly  this  is  a  forced  construction.  The  clause,  **  be- 
fore the  feast  of  the  Passover,"  does  not  refer  to  the  sup- 


540  APPENDIX. 

per  mentioned  in  the  second  verse,  but  to  what  imme- 
diately follows,  namely,  "Jesus  knew  that  his  hour  was 
come."  He  knew  it  beforehand.  It  is  in  accord  with  all 
that  he  said  and  reiterated  while  in  Galilee,  and  all  the 
way  thence  to  Jerusalem,  that  at  the  passover  his  hour  of 
departure  was  to  come.  The  whole  passage,  clearly  ren- 
dered, is  this :  — 

"  Now  Jesus,  before  the  feast  of  the  Passover,  knew 
that  his  time  to  pass  out  of  this  world  to  the  Father  had 
come,  and  having  loved  his  own,  who  were  in  the  world, 
he  loved  them  to  the  last.  And  when  supper  was  pro- 
ceeding, —  the  devil  having  put  it  into  the  heart  of  Judas 
Iscariot,  Simon's  son,  to  betray  him,  —  Jesus,  knowing 
that  the  Father  had  given  all  things  into  his  hands,  and 
that  he  came  from  God  and  was  returning  to  God,  arose 
from  supper,  and,  putting  off  his  mantle,  took  a  cloth 
and  girded  himself." 

The  objection  that  the  fourth  evangelist  does  not  say 
that  this  is  the  paschal  supper,  and  go  on  to  describe  it 
as  such,  is  trivial  in  the  extreme.  He  is  writing  with  the 
synoptics  before  him,  on  purpose  to  supplement  them, 
and  if  he  used  common  sense  he  would  not  tell  their 
story  over  again.  This  very  omission  is  highly  signifi- 
cant. There  is  a  tacit  reference  to  what  they  had  writ- 
ten, and  needed  not  to  be  repeated.  Still  emphasizing 
the  fact  that  Jesus  had  forecast  the  time  of  his  death, 
and  that  the  tender  care  which  he  had  manifested  for  his 
own  followers  continued  to  the  last,  the  whole  passage  is 
in  beautiful  harmony  with  all  that  precedes  and  follows. 
It  is  hardly  a  paraphrase  to  render :  "  Jesus  knew  his 
time  was  to  come  at  the  feast  of  the  Passover,  long  before 


APPENDIX.  541 

the  time  of  that  festival  had  arrived,  and  now  that  it  had 
arrived,  his  love  of  his  own  was  not  remitted  on  account 
of  his  personal  dangers,  and  so,  the  paschal  supper  being 
in  progress,  he  even  left  the  table  to  wash  their  feet." 

Still,  if  there  is  any  possible  doubt  as  to  the  meaning 
of  this  passage,  it  will  vanish  as  we  read  on.  The  evan- 
gelist proceeds  to  report  the  discourses  of  Jesus  with  his 
disciples  in  the  four  following  chapters,  which  the  synop- 
tics had  omitted  entirely,  but  which  John  gives  in  full  for 
the  plain  reason  that  they  are  in  that  high  spiritual  strain 
whose  music  touched  his  inmost  thought,  but  which  only 
fell  on  the  external  ear  and  mind  of  the  other  disciples. 
Then  followed  the  scene  in  Gethsemane ;  and,  on  the 
next  morning,  the  trial  and  the  crucifixion.  Describing 
the  latter,  the  fourth  evangelist  says,  "  It  was  toward  noon 
on  the  Preparation  of  the  Passover"  (xix.  14).  What 
was  "  the  Preparation  "  ?  It  was  the  day  before  the  Jew- 
ish Sabbath,  or  Friday.  The  word  was  just  as  much 
appropriated  to  designate  that  day,  as  our  word  Saturday 
is  to  designate  the  day  before  Sunday.  The  Passover 
festival  continued  seven  days,  during  which  unleavened 
bread  and  other  sacrifices  beside  that  of  the  paschal  lamb 
were  eaten  ;  and  the  word  "  Passover  "  was  used  to  cover 
the  whole  of  that  time  ;  so  that  Mr.  Norton  very  prop- 
erly renders  the  above  passage,  "  It  was  towards  noon 
on  the  Preparation-day  of  passover  week."  Here,  then, 
it  is  distinctly  announced  by  the  fourth  evangelist  that 
the  crucifixion  took  place  on  Friday,  in  harmony  with  the 
synoptics,  using  the  exact  term  which  they  employ,  who 
call  the  Preparation  "M^  day  before  the  Sabbath."  See 
Mark  xv.  42,  compared  with  Matt,  xxvii.  62.     See  also 


542  APPENDIX, 

Luke  xxiii.  54,  who  says,  speaking  of  the  day  of  the  cm* 
cifixion,  "  It  was  Preparation-day,  and  the  Sabbath  was 
drawing  on;"  thus  making  plain  beyond  all  doubt  that 
Preparation-day  was  Friday. 

Still  the  Tubingen  critics  will  have  it  that  "  the  Prep- 
aration," as  used  by  the  fourth  evangelist,  means  the  day 
before  the  Passover,  though  without  the  faintest  shadow 
of  evidence.  Pass  on  a  little  further,  then,  and  let  the 
fourth  evangelist  interpret  himself.  After  Jesus  had 
bowed  his  head  and  expired,  the  writer  proceeds  to  say, 
the  "  Jews,  as  it  was  the  Preparation-day,  that  the  bodies 
might  not  remain  on  the  cross  during  the  Sabbath^  as  thai 
Sabbath-day  was  a  high  day,  requested  Pilate  that  their' 
legs  might  be  broken,  and  they  be  taken  away"  (chap, 
xix.  31).  The  Sabbath-day  of  paschal  week  was  a  great 
day,  commemorated  with  special  pomp  and  ceremony, 
and  would  be  profaned  by  the  spectacle  of  dead  bodies 
near  Jerusalem,  which  rendered  any  one  who  came  in 
sight  of  them  legally  unclean.  Therefore  the  execution 
is  hurried  through,  and,  because  late  on  Friday  afternoon 
the  two  robbers  were  still  alive,  their  bodies  were  broken 
to  hasten  dissolution ;  and,  though  Jesus  was  apparently 
dead,  one  of  the  soldiers  pierced  his  side  to  make  the 
fact  perfectly  sure,  that  the  bodies  might  be  taken  down 
and  put  out  of  the  way  before  the  Sabbath  drew  on. 
Thus  the  fourth  evangelist  not  only  says  that  Jesus  was 
put  to  death  on  Friday,  but  he  is  at  pains  to  repeat  his 
statement  with  circumstantial  details  as  to  how  the  execu- 
tion was  hastened  lest  they  should  encroach  on  the  sanc- 
tity of  the  Sabbath-day. 

Nor  is  this  all.    He  repeats  his  statement  yet  again  in 


APPENDIX,  543 

the  closing  verse  of  this  same  chapter,  where  he  describes 
the  removal  of  the  body  to  Joseph's  tomb.  "  There,  then, 
they  laid  Jesus,  it  being  the  Preparation-day  of  the  ^ews." 
Tf  the  fourth  evangelist  had  foreseen  this  very  controversy 
he  could  not  have  been  more  decisive  and  emphatic  in 
his  language,  not  only  telling  us  once,  but  three  times 
over,  that  Jesus  was  put  to  death  on  Friday,  in  exact 
agreement  with  the  synoptics,  furnishing  minute  details, 
which  they  had  omitted,  which  serve  for  more  complete 
and  undoubted  verification.  That  "  the  Preparation " 
meant  invariably  Friday,  any  one  can  abundantly  verify 
from  the  parallel  passages  in  the  synoptics,  and  from 
Josephus,  and  from  other  writers,  patristic  and  classical. 
See  Norton's  translation  and  commentary,  ad.  loc.  The 
only  other  passage  which  would  require  elucidation  is 
xviii.  28 :  "  Then,  early  in  the  morning  they  carried  Je- 
sus from  Caiaphas  to  the  Praetorium.  And  they  did  not 
themselves  enter  the  Praetorium,  lest  they  should  be  de- 
filed and  prevented  from  eating  the  Passover."  This 
was  at  the  trial  on  the  morning  of  the  day  of  crucifixion  ; 
and,  as  the  paschal  lamb  was  always  eaten  the  evening 
previous,  it  is  argued  that  John  here  again  makes  the 
crucifixion  fall  on  the  day  before  the  Passover.  All  this 
is  quickly  answered  when  we  remember  that  "  eating  the 
Passover"  meant  not  merely  the  paschal  lamb  of  the 
evening  before,  but  also  the  sacrifices  and  unleavened 
bread  of  the  whole  Passover  week.' 

The  reader  may  be  surprised  when  we  say  that  the  ob- 
jection, which  these  simple  quotations  banish  clean  out 
of  sight,  has  been  relied  upon  as  the  most  stubborn  of  all 
against  the  genuineness  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  but  this  is 


544  APPENDIX. 

literally  true.  The  very  flood-gates  of  learning  have  been 
opened  in  order  to  cover  with  darkness  a  subject  which 
vc\  itself  seems  as  clear  as  the  light  of  noon-day. 


THE   BIRTH   OF   CHRIST. 


It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion given  in  chapter  iii.,  Part  II.,  is  not  Darwinian. 
It  is  Darwin's  theory  of  "natural  selection  "  supplemented 
as  far  as  it  consistently  goes  by  St.  George  Mivart's  theory 
of  "  derivative  creation."  The  latter,  however,  seems  to  me 
to  have  made  a  very  lame  and  imperfect  use  of  the  truth 
which  he  handles.  He  supposes  that  nature  or  the  Cos- 
mos only  as  originally  created  was  the  immediate  super- 
natural work  of  the  Creator ;  that  it  had  certain  tenden- 
cies impressed  upon  it  to  be  unfolded  within  it,  such  as 
tendencies  to  develop  new  species  at  certain  times  and 
eras.  A  clock-maker  so  constructs  his  time  piece  that 
at  certain  hours  the  hammer  will  strike  from  one  up  to 
twelve  successively  without  any  foreign  interference.  So 
God  made  and  superintends  his  Cosmos,  but  does  not 
work  immediately  in  it.  But  in  due  time  a  human  body 
was  evolved  out  of  this  Cosmical  machine,  with  lower 
organizations  for  a  basis ;  the  original  tendencies  work- 
ing upward  till  they  produced  a  human  form ;  or  to  keep 
to  our  illustration,  the  clock  kept  striking  more  and  more 
till  it  struck  the  hour  of  noon.  At  this  signal  the  Creator 
interferes.     The  Cosmos,  though   by  its   inherent  power 


APPENDIX,  545 

it  could  evolve  a  human  body,  could  not  put  an  immortal 
soul  into  it.  Here  the  Creator  comes  in  immediately  and 
supernaturally,  breathes  a  soul  into  the  body,  and  so  man 
appears  on  the  earth.  But  why  not  acknowledge  that 
God  is  immanent  and  interworking  in  his  Cosmos  as  well 
as  overlooking  it;  that  He  not  only  created  it  once  but 
creates  it  freshly  every  day  and  hour  ?  That  done  there 
are  no  difficulties  in  the  theory  of  evolution,  and  Darwin- 
ism is  supplemented  by  the  only  truth  that  can  give  it 
philosophic  wholeness  and  consistency.  "  Natural  selec- 
tion "  accounts  for  change  of  species  within  a  certain 
range,  but  it  breaks  down  when  we  apply  it  universally, 
as  St.  George  Mivart  clearly  shows.  It  cannot  pass  the 
line  between  the  animal,  and  the  immortal  being  we  call 
man,  neither  can  it  evolve  the  animal  from  the  plant,  nor 
the  vegetable  kingdom  from  the  mineral  without  the  ac- 
knowledgment of  an  immanent  creative  force  acting  in- 
telligently, though  acting  through  natural  laws.  Natural 
paternity  only  produces  its  kind,  and  when  a  higher  king- 
dom of  nature  is  evolved  from  a  lower  one,  we  must  be- 
lieve in  the  immanence  of  a  power  higher  than  either,  or 
else  break  the  continuity  of  rational  thought. 

The  doctrine  of  the  supernatural  birth  of  Christ  is 
placed  on  ground  independent  of  all  these  analogies. 
They  are  only  referred  to  for  the  purpose  of  showing  the 
impotence  of  objections  from  mere  naturalism,  since  nat- 
uralism cannot  account  for  the  original  birth  of  man  with- 
out acknowledgment  of  an  immediate  higher  paternity. 
We  receive  the  doctrine  of  the  birth  of  Christ  as  given  by 
the  evangelic  narratives,  not  merely  because  they  have 
declared  it,  but  because  with  the  other  facts  of  his  life  it 
35 


546  APPENDIX. 

makes  a  seamless,  complete,  and  consistent  whole.  Wc 
understand  Christ  himself  to  claim  it.  See  Matt.  xxii. 
41-45. 


C. 

THE    PREEXISTENCE. 


Mr.  Norton  renders  John  viii.  28:  "Before  Abraham 
was  born  I  was  he."  Undoubtedly  the  words  admit  of 
this  rendering  as  an  instance  where  the  present  tense  is 
used  for  the  past.  But  the  common  usage  requires  that 
€yw  €i/xt  should  be  rendered  "  I  am,"  and  by  this  render- 
ing we  think  the  significance  of  the  passage  is  more  com- 
pletely given,  though  the  difference  would  not  affect  in  the 
least  any  theological  doctrine  which  the  text  might  be 
supposed  to  teach.  If  we  supply  the  ellipsis  by  the  pro- 
noun "  he  "  the  question  immediately  returns,  What  is  its 
antecedent  1  Plainly,  "  the  Son  "  or  "  the  Son  of  Man," 
occurring  in  immediate  connection,  —  terms  which  Jesus 
used  invariably  in  his  colloquies  with  the  Jews  in  the 
fourth  Gospel,  and  which  almost  as  invariably  raised 
against  him  the  charge  of  blasphemy.  For  the  emphasis 
is  always  on  the  article.  It  is  the  Son,  or  the  only  Son. 
It  is  sonship  in  a  sense  that  applies  to  him  exclusively 
that  Jesus  here  affirms.  Not  less  than  nine  times  m  this 
same  eighth  chapter,  and  in  this  same  conversation,  Jesus 
asserts  this  sonship,  by  calling  God  ^^  my  Father,"  or  by 
calling  himself  ^'  the  Son,"  In  verse  28  he  tells  them, 
**  When  ye  have  lifted  up  the  Son  of  Man,  then  shall  ye 


APPENDIX,  547 

know  that  I  am,"  that  is,  that  I  am  the  Son  of  Man.  In 
verse  25  they  ask  him  to  supply  the  ellipsis  himself,  which 
he  does.  He  had  told  them,  "  If  ye  believe  not  that  I  am, 
ye  shall  die  in  your  sins."  "  That  you  are  who  1  "  they 
ask  him.  "  The  same  that  I  said  unto  you  from  the  begin- 
ning'^ What  had  he  called  himself  from  the  beginning? 
If  the  reader  will  turn  back  he  will  see.  In  the  conversa- 
tion with  Nicodemus  he  calls  himself  the  only  begotten 
Son  of  God  "  (iii.  16-18).  In  chapter  fifth  this  sonship 
is  asserted  not  less  than  eight  times,  so  that  the  Jews 
seek  to  kill  him  because  he  made  himself  equal  with  God 
(t<rov  kavTov  ttoiooi/  tuJ  0€a)).  As  Son  of  God  he  had  abrogated  ^ 
the  Sabbath,  and  annulled  the  law  of  Moses,  thus  arrogat- 
ing to  himself,  they  thought,  the  prerogatives  of  Jehovah. 
The  reader  need  not  be  told  that  this  charge  in  its  very 
nature  is  of  blasphemy,  even  were  it  not  called  so  after- 
ward, as  it  is  twice  over.  It  was  punishable  with  death 
by  stoning  under  the  Jewish  law  (see  Lev.  xxiv.  16). 
This  was  at  the  second  visit  of  Jesus  to  the  Capitol  after 
entering  on  his  mission,  and  it  was  the  standing  accusa- 
tion against  him  to  the  close,  invariably  for  calling  him- 
self the  Son  of  God,  or  Son  of  Man.  Through  five  suc- 
cessive scenes  the  charge  comes  up  when  they  seek  to 
"kill  him.  It  came  up  at  the  fourth  visit  to  Jerusalem 
^see  John  x.  33).  It  came  up  at  the  mock  trial  before 
the  High  Priest,  who  shook  his  robe  saying,  "  He  hath 
spoken  blasphemy,"  because  he  had  called  himself  "  the 
Son  of  Man  "  (Matt.  xxvi.  64).  It  came  up  before  Pilate, 
where  the  Jews  refer  to  their  law  requiring  death  "be- 
cause he  made  himself  the  Son  of  God." 
There  can  be  no  shadow  of  doubt,  therefore,  as  to  how 


548  APPENDIX. 

the  ellipsis  should  be  supplied  in  John  viii.  58,  or  how 
John  himself  must  have  understood  it  who  reports  the 
words.  He  opens  his  Gospel  by  calling  the  Word  made 
flesh,  which  was  "  in  the  beginning,"  "  the  only  begotten 
of  the  Father,"  and  "  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God."  He 
reports  Jesus  as  saying  the  same  of  himself,  twice  in  the 
identical  words  of  "  only  begotten  Son,"  always  in  terms 
that  involve  that  meaning.  He  had  been  saying  it  all 
through  the  preceding  chapters,  and  nine  times  in  this 
same  eighth  chapter,  which  led  on  to  the  declaration  in 
verse  58,  and  he  lay  under  the  charge  of  blasphemy  for  say- 
ing it.  It  should  read  then  "  Before  Abraham  was  born,  I 
am  the  Son  of  God,"  or  "  I  am  the  only  begotten  of  the 
Father."  They  took  up  stones,  and  we  cannot  mistake  as 
to  what  the  accusation  was.  We  come  to  the  same  result, 
by  rendering  in  the  past  tense  "  From  before  the  birth  of 
Abraham  I  have  been  the  only  begotten  of  the  Father," 
referring  us  directly  to  the  Proem  where  "  the  Word  '* 
who  was  "  from  the  Beginning,"  is  "  the  only  begotten 
Son."  I  have  kept,  however,  to  the  rendering  in  the  pres- 
ent tense,  because  the  Eternal  Word  from  which  Jesus 
speaks,  and  which,  as  bread  from  heaven  he  calls  himself ^ 
is  timeless,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  this  is  intimated  in 
the  text. 

I  can  but  notice  here  a  common  humanitarian  argu- 
ment, that  the  divinity  of  Christ  is  like  that  of  other  men 
because  it  is  "  derived."  If  we  keep  to  the  royal  image 
of  the  Johannean  writings,  we  shall  see  that  this  argument 
has  no  force.  The  Word  which  became  incarnate  in 
Christ,  which  is  God  speaking,  or,  in  the  act  of  self-reve- 
lation,  is  called  "  Light,"  "  the  Light  which  coming  into 


APPENDIX.  549 

the  world  enlightens  every  man."  So  .Christ  as  this  Word 
calls  himself  "  the  Light  of  the  World."  In  the  Apoca- 
lypse his  face  is  as  "  the  Sun,"  and  in  heaven  "  the  Lamb 
is  the  Light  thereof."  The  Word  is  all  that  by  which 
God  is  known  or  shines  forth,  whether  in  nature,  in  man, 
or  supremely  in  Christ.  The  Word  on  the  bosom  of  the 
Father,  ever  begotten  from  the  depths  of  his  love,  is  as 
the  photosphere  on  the  sun's  disc,  ever  born  of  the  solar 
fire,  or  if  you  will,  forever  derived  or  given  from  the  solar 
deeps,  without  which  the  sun  would  be  an  invisible  mass 
in  the  heavens,  but  by  which  he  fills  the  universe  with 
life  and  light.  It  no  less  belongs  to  the  sun  and  is  part 
of  it  from  being  "  derived.''  The  image  gives  us  the  con- 
ception of  the  Divine  Being,  as  not  a  bare  point  or  dead 
unity,  but  a  Divine  Organism  which  has  eternal  life  and 
interaction  in  itself,  even  as  the  human  being,  God's  im- 
age, has  interaction  in  himself,  with  one  power  in  deriva- 
tion from  another.  Keep  clearly  to  the  royal  image  itself, 
and  there  is  no  confusion  of  thought  in  calling  the  Logos 
both  essentially  divine,  and  only  begotten  ;  nor  is  there 
any  solecism  in  the  language  of  the  church,  such  as 
"  eternal  Son,"  or,  "  very  God  of  very  God,"  for  the  words 
do  not  mean  that  there  are  two  Gods,  but  that  God  and 
his  Logos  are  consubstantial.  To  say  that  all  power  in 
heaven  and  earth  is  "  given  "  by  one  being  to  another,  as 
if  one  person  could  confer  omnipotence  on  another  per- 
son, is  gross  solecism  of  language.  To  say  that  God 
could  have  an  only  Son,  in  any  natural  sense,  "  first  born 
of  the  whole  creation,"  yet  not  appearing  till  four  thou- 
sand years  after  the  creation,  is  most  absurd  anachronism. 
But  all  this  disappears  when  we  think  of  the  Divine  Be- 


550  APPENDIX. 

ing,  neither  as  a  bare  point  of  unity,  nor  a  stagnant  deep^ 
but  having  eternal  activities  within  himself,  a  Living  God. 
the  motions  of  whose  nature  all  this  imagery  serves  to 
shadow  forth.  For  a  mortal  man,  or  for  an  archangel  as 
well,  to  announce  that  God  is  greater  than  he  is,  were 
profane  egoism.  But  for  Jesus  speaking  as  the  Word  to 
say,  "  my  Father  is  greater  than  I,"  is  to  say  only  that 
God  as  absolute,  is  more  than  God  revealed. 


D. 

PERSONALITY   AND   PERSONIFICATION. 

In  this  treatise  we  have  regarded  the  Logos  as  personi- 
fied. If  our  work  were  not  expository  rather  than  philo^ 
sophical  or  ontological,  it  would  require  a  dissertation  on 
the  distinction  between  personality  and  personification. 
Though  the  Word  in  the  New  Testament  is  personified,  it 
is  none  the  less  regarded  as  hypostatized.  It  is  not  an 
abstract  noun ;  not  like  human  speech,  something  which 
can  be  broken  off  from  the  speaker  and  become  dead 
l.»tter.  The  divine  substance  is  in  it  continuous  and  un- 
broken, though  it  is  not  a  person  exterior  to  God.  It  .•'x 
that  in  which  the  One  Divine  Person  is  always  revealed. 
Personality  involves  essentially  the  idea  of  Will  or  self 
conscious  volition.  Assuming  that  there  are  three  per- 
sons in  the  Godhead,  or  three  self-conscious  Wills,  is  pre- 
cisely where  Trinitarianism  breaks  up  in  Tritheism  ;  though 
as  shown  in  the  text  there  are  forms  of  Trinitarianism  which 


APPEiYDIX. 


551 


drop  the  word  '*  persons  "  and  avoid  this  danger.  While 
the  New  Testament  formula  of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit, 
declares  three  essentials  of  the  Divine  Being,  we  construe 
it  in  harmony  with  the  strictest  and  purest  monotheism. 
The  Word  and  the  Spiri  t  may  be  separately  personified, 
and  are  in  the  New  Testament ;  but  the  moment  we  think 
of  them  as  separate  persons  and  not  co-essentials  of  one 
Person,  we  have  lost  the  Divine  Unity,  and  are  in  the 
worship  of  three  Gods.  The  debate  of  fifteen  centuries 
has  shown  no  possible  escape  from  this  alternative. 


Date 

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liti'^i'itiiw 

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^TO-^ 

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